Learn How To Root Blueberries In Less Than 3 Minutes!

Do you want to learn how to root blueberries? In just 3 minutes you will learn the basics so you can grow your own blueberries from cuttings.

In a recent visit to Madibri nursery and cut flower farm, we gathered some valuable information on running a business in the green industry. While our previous videos focused on protea and fynbos production, we also had a look at how the nursery grows blueberries from cuttings.

Using sharp, clean shears the cuttings are taken from semi-hardened wood. This refers to new season growth that has hardened off for a few months. Cuttings are made to be 7-10cm long with 2-3 nodes.

The propagation medium and misting system is exactly the same as those for the proteas - Polystyrene trays are filled with a propagation mix made up of peat, perlite and small pieces of polystyrene. No rooting hormone is necessary here. Holes are punched into the mix before the cuttings are stuck.

The cuttings are kept under a mist system. At this stage, humidity is key. The mist system is more important to keep the cuttings turgid than it is to supply them with water in the trays. Remember, the more humid the environment is, the less water that will evaporate from the cuttings and therefore they will not need as much water from the propagation mix. On most days, misting occurs 4 times a day for 30 second intervals. On very cold days however, no misting is applied.

The trays are placed on beds made up of polystyrene covered by netting. This means the trays are protected from the cold concrete underlying the polystyrene beds. It also promotes drainage of excess water.

After a few months, the cuttings will look like this. You can see how well the roots have bound the soil around them. Once your cuttings look like this, you can pot them up into containers.

These containers are filled with an acid compost mix. Blueberries love an acid soil – in acidic soils, certain beneficial bacteria and fungi exist which release minerals and ammonia, which promote vigorous blueberry growth. In this nursery, Trichoderma is sometimes applied through the irrigation water. Trichoderma is a genus of fungi that can be found in all soils. They help suppress pathogenic fungi species that may be harmful to the plants.

After another few months of growth, the berries look like this and they can be prepared for the market. Most often, blueberries are most in demand during the spring months when they begin to flower and customers can enjoy berries shortly after.

If you would like to contact Madibri's owner Nico, here are his details:

Nico's retail nursery (find his plants and flowers here!):

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[christineedwards]

Why are they using styrofoam in the soil? Is it because of how expensive perlite is? The styrofoam has literally no benefit for the plant, the perlite is already adding drainage to the soil, and styrofoam is terrible for the environment. It would be better to just use a silica sand or even bark or wood chips for extra drainage, if it was even needed with perlite already being in the mix.

[MikeB_]

This is wack. You never really explain how to root them as your title says. No speaking just some lame bg music.

[allanpennington]

I took some cuttings from Rabbiteyes and they successfully took but after a year in a pot I have one central 'trunk' as it were with quite a few canes branching up from the one central point. There are no other canes coming up from the crown. Should I remove all but three or so of the current canes and cut those back by half? Will this force the bush to push new canes from the roots under the soil and thus widen the crown?

[MorningViewBeeCo]

Promoting microplastics in gardening is absolutely absurd. This should be canceled.

[dddd.]

I have berry tree over 30 year the fruit is making half black and half white from the middle of March till the end of April the problem many of the fruits fell down.