Blueberry seedlings update
Two years old seedlings
Two years ago, I have started growing blueberries from seeds. I have collected some of the seeds from large healthy fruits on my old blueberry plants. After stratification, seeds germinated very well and I ended up with many tiny slow growing blueberry seedlings. I have waited two years, before planting them into their final location and I have kept them in a rather small container in peat without any additional fertilizer. They could be a lot happier if i’d give them some food earlier, but they managed to grow anyway. When I planted them into mound of peat outside last year, they immediately started growing large shoots (compared to existing growth). In autumn, it became evident, that most of the seedling set up their first flower buds. Some failed to survive the weight of snow during the winter.
Third growing season
In early spring, the buds started swelling and I noticed they will start even more vigorous than last year. All the 1 year old shoots started leafing out early with nice red colored young leaves. All the shoots were extremely healthy and small seedlings soon began to look like nice little bushes. Some of the shoots have already started flowering. Flowers and leaves seem to be similar to their parent plants, but there is one plant with slightly different flowers. One of the seedlings have flowers which have much smaller opening of the flower. Despite being tighter and possibly harder for the pollinators to pollinate the flowers, there did not seem to be any issues regarding pollination.
FIRST FLOWERING
I didn’t expect them to start flowering so early, as they are not taller than 30 cm with shoots just a few mm thick. At first, when flower buds opened, flowers appeared to be small and perhaps even a bit distorted with stigma pointing out of developing petals. Later, flowers developed normally and the seedlings started flowering at the same time as their parents. It will be interesting to see their fruits when they ripen. Plant appearance is roughly identical to their parents so I’d guess the fruits will be the same as well.
6 thoughts on “Blueberry seedlings update”
Are you planting other types of blueberries?
I bought so called Siberian Blueberry (Lonicera caerulea) which is not even related to blueberries but the fruit kind of looks similar. I’ll see how it works out. It is self fertile and I only have one plant so I’ll just have to wait and see. I might start trying setting up some seeds and cuttings next year. 🙂
Can I have your email? So i can ask about blueberry, thanks
You can always ask here or in case I write about it – in new post.
I get notified about all the comments and I usually reply . If you need mail it’s my username @ domain name of this blog. 🙂
Are you having an update for this? I am keen to see it..
Hello,
I haven’t been snapping any new photos of the blueberry seedlings and cuttings, but they are both doing great.
Seedlings are a bit different from the mother plant, especially one which has flowers that are rounder and the blueberries are noticeably sweeter. I will make some new photos next season as they start growing again. The plants are growing quite nicely and they had a lot of berries on them this season. One of the seedling was producing longer than any other plant, but the berries were a bit smaller. Sadly, these were not as sweet as the sweeter version. It’s interesting how diverse they can get if you grow them from seeds.