Growing blueberry plants

My son is blueberry crazy.  He loves blueberries.  He loves eating blueberries, he loves talking about blueberries, he has a soft toy that is a blueberry, he has a blanket with pictures of blueberries on it, I think he may have a few other blueberry things too.  There are many worse things in this world he could be obsessed by, so I don't discourage his blueberry obsession. 

Freshly picked blueberries

I have tried to grow blueberries a few times before, and failed.  The first time I bought a variety called 'Northland'.  It didn't really grow, it didn't flower, I had it planted in a bad spot, then we moved house and I didn't bring it with us.

The next time I bought a variety called 'Brigita'.  This did grow, then in its first year we got hit by extreme heat and drought and dust storms and week after week of thick choking smoke and air quality that had over 250 times the safe level of pollutants.  As I didn't go out in the smoke more than absolutely necessary I didn't water things as much as they needed. Sadly, in drought with limited water this blueberry plant, along with many plants I owned at the time, also died.  

As my son is so taken by blueberries, I decided to try to grow a blueberry plant again.  This time I figured I would get a few varieties to ensure cross pollination, and I planned on keeping them in pots the first year so I could water them and protect them if needed. 

Many varieties of blueberry are self pollinating, but they all crop better when pollinated by a different variety.  As well as producing more fruit when cross pollinated, there is evidence that the berries are larger and sweeter when cross pollinated.  For these reasons, I looked around a bit to see what varieties were available.  

I ended up getting three varieties of blueberry plants: Brigita, Blue Rose, and Sunshine Blue.

I got three small plants in February 2025, and almost immediately put them in larger pots of soil.  These grew over summer, then went dormant for winter.  This was a good sign. 

In spring the blueberry bushes all broke dormancy, and all of them flowered a lot.  I am told not to expect much the first crop, but they did well.  

Blueberry toy and blueberry blanket

Brigita and Blue Rose were both flowering September and October 2025.  Honey bees and other insects were active at this time, so they likely cross pollinated a bit which is what I was hoping for.  The fruit on both plants was ripe early December 2025 - January 2026.  The fruit from both plants were large and sweet.  Both plants produced a good amount of berries for their first year.

Sunshine Blue was flowering October 2025, but didn't overlap with the other two varieties as much as I had hoped.  This produced huge numbers of flowers.  Many flowers aborted, we didn't get many ripe berries from this plant, and even though this variety is said to be self-pollinating I suspect the large number of aborted flowers may have been due to low pollination.  Its fruit was ripe late December 2025 - January 2026.  This plant produced smaller fruit and was a bit sour.  I'm told this variety is smaller and produces berries that are a little sour, so this was not unexpected.

My son picked lots of blueberries over the season

While I wasn't unimpressed by any of the blueberry plants, I much preferred Brigita and Blue Rose.  They both produces lots of berries, the berries were large, the berries were simple to harvest, and the berries were tasty and sweet.  I am tempted to take a few cuttings of these two, and grow a few more of them.  

I had intended on planting these in the garden over winter while they are dormant rather than keeping them in pots.  I am not sure if I will do that this year, or keep them in pots for another year.  Having them in pots made netting from birds simple, and made watering easy.  The down side of this is they may be stunted or not reach their potential if grown in pots for too long.

This summer was mostly mild temperature wise, but it was very dry and I struggled to keep the water up to the garden.  We also had a few days of extreme heat and wind.  This heat damaged lots of plants that were already suffering from lack of water and had not had a chance to slowly build up tolerance to the heat.  The blueberry plants sustained some damage, but all three survived for me and all three look like they are heading into dormancy strong.

Unless something unexpected happens, I will continue to grow all three of these blueberry plants.  I may try to track down a few more varieties, and see if I can find any that perform even better in my climate.  I was tempted to try and grow some from seed, but may put that off until another year. 

Home grown blueberries taste amazing as they can be picked when perfectly ripe.  Having my kids help grow these organically is something they will hopefully remember fondly when they are older.  The blueberry plants were not cheap, but punnet blueberries from the shops are also pretty expensive.  With the amount of blueberries produced, Brigita and Blue Rose both came close to breaking even price wise in their first year, and Sunshine Blue will need at least a second year to break even.