Highbush Blueberry yamadori

[Darth Masiah]

holy vaccinium! i was quite surprised when i finally got this guy out of the ground. leo might even comment on this one, i thought ive been over on zack's bonsaisouth for years, so i tried not to do anything he wouldn't do, as he's had a lot of success collecting vaccinium for bonsai. hopefully it makes it.

going for the baby of the bunch.






look at those two long roots

 

[Darth Masiah]

after a couple years of growth i want to start removing the biggest of the 3 trunks.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Looks great. Nice old "fat" trunk, well fat for a blueberry. I suspect you have one of the "southern highbush" blueberries, as I believe Alabama is just too warm in summer and mild in winter to find a northern highbush blueberry. The southern highbush are mostly hybrids from Vaccinium darrowii, or crosses between V. corymbosum and V. darrowii. If the blueberry is every or mostly evergreen through winter it is likely V. darrowii.

Which means my experience with V. corymbosum may or may not apply.

If any suckers, sprout from the roots, cut them off immediately if you want the trunk to bud back. The long lived part of the blueberry is the root system, and it is not uncommon for roots to abandon older trunks in favor of young shoots from the roots. If you remove the "root suckers" immediately, the roots will keep supplying the main trunk.

I hope it sprouts for you. Looks like it will.

I would actually consider cutting to the red marks in your image now, rather than wait. That way, the energy for producing buds will only go into the areas you want to keep. This is just a suggestion. There is nothing wrong with leaving the longer stubs and cutting back later. But I would cut harder sooner myself.

 

[Darth Masiah]

I would actually consider cutting to the red marks in your image now, rather than wait. That way, the energy for producing buds will only go into the areas you want to keep. This is just a suggestion. There is nothing wrong with leaving the longer stubs and cutting back later. But I would cut harder sooner myself.

thanks for the advice. southern highbush, huh. cool. there's a lot of different blueberry cultivars around the property. i would've cut a little closer to where these red lines are, but I'm a little trepiditious about how wounds heal on this guy. i want to get some experience first.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

One unique feature of southern highbush, is that they produce much more fruit with cross pollination. If possible, keep 2 different named varieties in your back yard.

With northern highbush, there are 3 sizes of berries, the largest berries will have been pollinated with pollen from a different named variety. Solitary bees, mason bees and carpenter bees most commonly do this cross pollination. The "average" size berries will be from self pollination. Bumble bees are the "buzz pollinators" that vibrate the flowers as the forage for nectar, and most often end up self pollinating the flower. The smallest berries usually are from flowers that did not get pollinated. Blueberry flowers that don't get pollinated can form small, seedless fruit.

Curiously, honey bees are not very efficient pollinators of blueberries. They just don't do the job very well. Solitary bees, especially carpenter bees and mason bees are the most effective, and bumble bees are a close second. These are all our native bees.

With southern highbush, you need at least some cross pollination to get yields similar to northern highbush. They do not form as much fruit if they don't get "outcrossed".

Bees commonly fly a radius of 1/4 mile in their foraging, so any pollinator within 1/4 mile will be "good enough" to have fair number of berries. In theory, bees will wander 2 miles to forage, but for cross pollination you really want your 2 varieties within 1.4 mile of each other. Closer is better.

 

[Zach Smith]

Good job, and nice raw material! You may want to pick a single trunk line next year, but for now you've got something to work with. Bear in mind that the blueberries take three or four years to develop a good root system, so be patient and don't rush the tree into a bonsai pot. Maybe in year three at the earliest.

 

[Darth Masiah]

here's two more vacciniums i found a stone toss away from lake martin. I'm glad i went over to a friend of the family's to help out this weekend. i needed to make some extra loot, but finding some decent yamadori really made my mlk day. as soon as my substrate order gets here, it's on

 

[PA_Penjing]

Damn, those two new trees have great trunks. I say definitely collect

 

[Darth Masiah]

1/24/21

always an interesting time collecting and potting up yamadori

 

[Njyamadori]

Very nice yamadori. I just started collecting bittersweet since they are hard to kill. But nice trunks you got there

 

[Darth Masiah]

a yamadori seedling i plucked out of the yard a couple years ago


10/20

1/21

3/1/21

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Definitely blueberries. Nice.

You have enough bushes to begin your own truck farm. Yields of 7 to 15 pounds per bush are fairly normal, and lately we were getting $4 per pound for organic blueberries at the farmers markets. You have a possible income supplement there. LOL.

Nice trunks. Keep the fat trunks for bonsai, grow a row of the "skinny trunks" for fruit.

 

[Darth Masiah]

 

[Njyamadori]

Cool buds on my highbush blueberry are almost ready to leaf out . I’m trying to make a clump in the future but I don’t know if their is anything different about them .

 

[Darth Masiah]

damn! my k/a/d for vaccinium collecting this year is 1-0-2. i hate going negative even more than losing the game. it's the ffa lover in me i guess.

 

[Gabler]

damn! my k/a/d for vaccinium collecting this year is 1-0-2. i hate going negative even more than losing the game. it's the ffa lover in me i guess.

K/A/D as in kill/assist/death? As in first-person-shooter games? Caught me off guard there for a second here on a bonsai forum. I take it that means your other two collected specimens aren't waking up? Sorry to hear that.

 

[Darth Masiah]

K/A/D as in kill/assist/death? As in first-person-shooter games? Caught me off guard there for a second here on a bonsai forum. I take it that means your other two collected specimens aren't waking up?

yep and yep. the 1st one in this thread failed in a spectacular, trunk cracking spectacle to match my heart felt hope for the future of the tree. i have little hope the other is going to wake up. the roots were very sparse.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

When I propagate blueberries from cuttings, I take the cuttings in autumn or winter, then I plant them in a peat mix. They winter outdoors. In spring maybe just a leaf or two opens. They sit that way, only a leaf or two, for the entire spring and early summer. Suddenly, late summer they will begin growing. THat is the sign new roots have been made. I've had some cuttings sit until the end of the second summer to make roots. Not a problem if you are not in a hurry. The blueberries collected with few roots can form roots, it just takes a while.

As long as you get one or two leaves, don't give up, it could grow roots.

 

[Darth Masiah]

i managed to keep one spring cutting alive. haven't tried since.







3/23/2021

 

[Darth Masiah]

4/3/21