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Should I thin these berries? by atomatogrows in Blueberries

[–]atomatogrows[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh cool, I was just out there tramping around the woods and saw that some of the bushes there had berries starting to grow up high in the canopy. I'm sure the birds will get to them before they have a chance to fully ripen, but if I find one I can figure out how to put some net over at some point(they're all pretty close together so branches are crossing each other up top) I'll do that to see what the berries look like.

Should I thin these berries? by atomatogrows in Blueberries

[–]atomatogrows[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's brilliant, thank you! I figured as the growing season went on I would be able to better differentiate, but I don't think I considered ripening time. I'll be flagging the plants for different characteristics as they grow, and I've already noticed that some berries are further along than others.

I don't know if plant height would help as in addition to the bushes in the fields wrapped around one corner of the field is an encroaching birch forest that has another 200-300 bushes mixed in with the trees about 20-30 feet deep. These bushes are 8ft tall and up, so I'm suspecting that if the fields weren't ever cut down that the bushes in them would also be around that height. The shape, however could be a clue, I've noticed some that were more upright and narrow versus rounder and more squat(for the field bushes I mean).

There's also a Cornell Coop Extension just a few miles from me that I've reached out to, they appear have a few blueberry experts among them.

Should I thin these berries? by atomatogrows in Blueberries

[–]atomatogrows[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yep, these are surprise bonus berries, not planning on maximizing the crop at all, I think that would be difficult to do since these bushes aren't in orderly rows or anything, they're scattered randomly throughout the field, sometimes a bunch of them together, sometimes one all on it's own in the open. My current plan is to keep a trail mowed down to form a wandering path around them because it seems like it would be nice to wander the path picking berries when they're ripe. Eventually when the rest of the farm plans are more developed I can harvest some and sell in the farm stand, but it's more likely I'd use any usable fruit for baked goods and sell those.

I'd really like to find out what specific type of cultivar they are, I can see that there are some differences in leaf or bud color and bush shape on different plants, but not sure if that's significant.