Do you have fruit trees or bushes? No? You should get some. The forest behind the farm where I grew up had an area that was totally choked with raspberry and blackberry bushes. All four of us would go down there, each carrying two five-gallon buckets, and pick berries. That’s 40 gallons of berries that made it back to the house out of the probably 60 gallons of berries that we picked and ate along the way. My mother would then make preserves out of them, which was just out of this world.
Today, our little slice of heaven has five blueberry bushes, which were here when we bought the place. However, the previous owners didn’t tend to them at all so they were totally overgrown and weren’t producing well. So, starting with our first growing season here, I started cutting back one of the bushes all the way down to the stump so it could start over, and then repeated that process each year so that I still have a decent yield of berries. This year is when I will cut down the last of the old bushes. So, if you have blueberries, or really any fruiting bush, this is a general guide for how to prune them properly. I’m doing this right at the tail end of the window, because pruning is best done while plants are still dormant. Next year, I’ll probably prune them in February.
First, let’s take a look at our baseline:
Believe it or not, there are five bushes in there. Only that big one, which is taking up the whole picture, is the one that needs to be cut all the way back. What few berries it does produce are way too high up to reach without a ladder, which means the birds get most of those. Most of the bush has turned into more of a tree. The canes have turned into wood and have developed a thin bark on them, and there’s a ton of dead canes and branches in there. Here’s a closer look at one of the bushes that got trimmed back a few years ago:
While the canes on this one have that nice shade of deep red and haven’t yet hardened into wood, there are way too many of them in there, plus there are a bunch of damaged and dead canes and twigs which need to go. The middle of the bush needs to be opened up a bit so that more light and air circulation can get in there during the main fruiting period. Also, there are a number of canes around the perimeter of the base which are growing horizontally—those are just begging to snap off during a storm, and even if they do fruit, the berries will be on the ground and become insect food.
So, first things first. I took my trusty, new, battery-powered chainsaw and cut down that big bush. I know it sounds extreme, but you literally cannot prune a blueberry bush too much. They are unkillable in that way. By the end of this growing season, a bunch of new canes will have appeared and grown to at least a foot or so in height. There won’t be any fruit from this bush this year, but there will be next year.
I left a couple of inches of stump still visible and this is where the new canes will start to pop out from the sides. As it is, even the new canes will probably need to be pretty heavily pruned next year because of the close concentration of these stumps.
Next, I need to start working on the other bushes. This is a much more tedious process because I want to maintain the healthy canes while eliminating both the unhealthy canes and any twigs which are either dead/dying, or don’t have much to offer in terms of fruiting buds. “What are fruiting buds” you ask? Well, they look like this:
See all those large round knobs? Those are fruiting buds. So, any twigs or canes which are either devoid of these buds, or simply don’t have enough buds to justify keeping them, need to go. Like these:
These canes and twigs actually have two problems. The bases of the canes are already turning woody, which is unusual for being so young, and the twigs—while they have good color—have almost no fruiting buds at all.
I also have to really look closely at pretty much every square inch of the canes and twigs to look for dead/dying/damaged twigs. This is a very detail-oriented task, so I have to take my time, and then lop off these little bits with the pruning shears. I couldn’t get any decent pictures to show what I’m talking about, but I’m sure you can tell the difference between “dead” and “alive”.
That whole process probably took me a little over an hour—maybe an hour and a half. Now, the blueberry patch looks like this:
Yup, that looks pretty extreme, but again you can’t prune blueberry bushes enough. This is a feature, not a bug. Mrs. Butcher also installed a wren house on a pole nearby. Wrens don’t eat fruit, but they defend their territory fiercely when nesting so if I can get a nesting pair in there, then that will mean losing fewer berries to other birds. Here’s what that little bush on the right looks like after pruning:
As you can see, the bush is thinner, which means more light and air in the middle of the bush. I could probably prune some more of the canes, but I want to see how this bush does this year before taking a more severe approach.
That’s pretty much it. There’s a bunch of blueberry bushes lining the perimeter of the island, but they aren’t mine, so they’ll just grow wild—but maybe I’ll try harvesting some from there this year. Now it’s just a matter of disposing of the brush and ordering a new batch of mulch. I cut the thick trunks from the big bush into firewood for Mrs. Butcher’s studio—she has a little wood stove that is designed for sailboats installed in there to keep things toasty warm in the winter.
During the growing season, I’ll need to keep an eye on how much water they’re getting. Even though they have such close proximity to the lake, it doesn’t really help much because their roots are shallow and don’t contain root hairs which makes them vulnerable to drying out—and last year we didn’t get shit for rain until after the growing season. Blueberries are one of the few plants that actually do better in acidic soil so all that wood mulch will be just fine.
I’d like to grow a pear tree again. We had a couple on the farm and those were the best pears I ever had—but there really isn’t a good place for us to put one on our incredibly small plot.
Got any fruiting trees or bushes? We’re getting strawberries this year for the first time so if anyone has suggestions or tips, plop them in the comments.
Great work. We have a raspberry bush and a blackberry bush. I was worried when I planted them that because I didn’t have multiples of either that they might not fruit, but that has not been the case since the year they were planted.
Your pruning advice works for those berry bushes as well, and I’ll likely get after mine tomorrow, although I did a little fall clean-up as well so that the spring would not be such a hassle.
No fruit trees for us. We just don’t have the room. The berry bushes are our happy little compromise.
Might try strawberries in a planter this year — those are Ms. Meme’s favorite.
That was very informative. We have some raspberry bushes but they mostly get eaten by birds. I think we have wrens in these parts, maybe if I put up a house it might help. Although we have a lot of blue jays and they’re very territorial so I don’t know if wrens would move in.
@butcherbakertoiletrymaker your lake views are fabulous…I can imagine relaxing there after a day’s work…really, really pretty. Off topic, I am 1/2 way through the week’s cooking ahead, and Keitel has the posts/lathe stained for the kitchen garden fencing. We are getting take out to mark our 25th wedding anniversary which was Tuesday, so we can both spend more time on projects than if I was cooking. Your berry bushes look big? Can you (or did I miss it) talk about light requirements and zone? Years to fruit? We just bought an olive tree that will need years to bear fruit and will need to be taken indoors and coddled over the winter…but blueberries are my jam…I canvthink about dumping the Christmas bamboo in favor of blueberries…
First, congratulations on your silver wedding anniversary! That’s not nothin’.
Berry bushes, generally speaking, enjoy their light. We’re in Zone 6a, so they bloom and fruit a bit later than the southern climates. As far as years to fruit, I honestly don’t know. These were here when we got here and were in terrible shape, as evidenced by that last gigantic bush.
I’d think olives would be super difficult to grow and harvest in the NE, so by all means let us know how that goes. Maybe Mrs. Butcher and I can get a potted olive tree if it looks like it works out for you.
Excellently informative post! We have about five blueberry bushes that have had a total yield of 20 blueberries over the five years they’ve been there – mainly because our yard guys kept weed wacking them in to oblivion. They destroyed so many things we planted, I had to let them go.
We also have two pear trees – a Keifer and a Moonglow( I think) – they have both produced pears but the deer refuse to let us have any. Also, they have the fire blight – so I spend most of my time picking off the affected leaves. In fact, it’s looking like one of them might have died(can’t remember which one is which) – even though there are lots of leafy shoots growing up from the bottom.
Also, I am incredibly envious of your fantastic lake view.
We have about 5 or 6 blueberry bushes around the yard. At least 3 moved with us 11 years ago from another house and my wife keeps moving them and stressing them out. A few of them produce really well but the ones in the back yard I don’t think get enough sun. When they do produce, the branches are so close to our fence that the robins just sit on the fence and eat all the berries. It’s one thing if they take the whole berry but sometimes just take a fucking bite and leave the rest! Our strawberries are prolific in the same backyard and we get more than we can deal with. Raspberries are in their 3rd year and hopefully will do better than last year which was pretty minimal. They do have to compete with my hops for space though so fuck them! Hops come first! We have been growing Muller Thurgau grapes for about 4 years and finally they are becoming established in their new home. I think we might get a good crop of them this year but doubtful enough to make wine. Only other fruit is my wife’s crazy hybrid apple tree that grows like 4 different varieties of apples and grows on a trellis. Daughter has avocado trees growing in the house but the chances of them every producing an avocado are slim to none!
…the multi-variety apple tree sounds pretty awesome…I’ve seen pictures of grafted trees that produce more than one kind of fruit but that might be a little too crazy for me… different sorts of the same fruit, though…that seems pretty cool?
It’s a pretty cool tree, I’ll talk to Butcher about doing a post on it once it starts blooming. They are called Espaliered apple trees, I’ve seen them with as many as 6 varieties. I’ll have to double check w/ my wife how many ours has. They ripen at slightly different times too so you have apples for an extended time at the end of summer/early fall.
Oh, yes, totally do a series of posts on the tree throughout the growing season so we can see how it progresses.
I have fig trees which are a little dicey after really hard winters, but we’ve been fine the past few years and one in particular grows a lot of fruit. A few years we’ve had bumper crops and had buckets, most years we still get plenty, even after the birds go at them. They are super easy to grow — just prune back the really leggy or old branches every 2-3 years and cut off the sprouts at ground level.
And they’re also nice since it’s impossible to get good ones in supermarkets and hard to get them at farmers markets, since they don’t ripen much after they’re picked and truly ripe ones don’t travel well.
…don’t think I’ve come across battery-powered chainsaws…but they sound like they might be a lot less hassle than the sort I have come across…those always seem to be pretty temperamental one way or another?
…looking forward to more of these posts in any case…adding I can learn to cope with the garden envy…that looks like a beautiful spot you’re in
…don’t know how autocorrect got adding out of that…it should say assuming?
It’s part of the Snapper 82v series–one battery for a ton of different tools. I started with the lawnmower and was so impressed I went and got the weed trimmer (replacing both of the previous tools which were dead/dying). When the corded electric chainsaw was finally breathing its last I went ahead and got the Snapper. It’s like I’m cutting through butter. Of course, I’m only doing small jobs with it. If I needed to cut down a bunch of larger trees, like we did at the old place, I would go with another corded chainsaw.
Oh that was very informative and helpful!
Nearish my house is a school garden and since they went all virtual last spring, they told the folks around there that we were welcome to enjoy whatever was produced, as well as help ourselves to any of the little wanderer plants that showed up. That’s how I got 5 extra tomato plants (they grew up in the paths so would have been dug out regardless) and was able to help myself to lacinato kale whenever I wanted.
The best part? Giant thornless blackberry bush and I picked probably 4 pints of large and delicious blackberries. I have a spot in my backyard where I could theoretically put in a blackberry bramble, but I don’t know how long it will take until they start producing.