Any chance of posting pictures?

I don't know about the iron, but I do know my blueberries stop ripening once the heat hits. Whatever stage they are in--green, blue---they just stop, and that's it for the rest of the year.

Carla in Sac

Really Carla?That sounds odd to me.What varieties? Brady

Just wanted to post an update for my question earlier.

My blueberries did look like they were not ripening but they did continue a healthy growth. It's just that the berries were not turning color, they were just putting on bigger size. This went on for a month or so, and finally now I am seeing lots of blue ripe berries on the plants.

So my guess is this: due to iron deficiency my plants pretty much stunted and went into hibernation. When I applied iron, they did begin growth like sleeping beauty awakening from her sleep :-). In all, between the time that symptoms occurred and corrective action taken, there was a a lapse of one month that shifted the whole cycle by a month or so.

So this has been an important lesson for me : I've seen this on multiple occasions with even established blueberries: they basically sulk when things go wrong. If no action taken then they begin the slow decline to death. For young plants this is a faster process but even for established plants it is important to keep watch on their progress.

Thanks all for the pointers!

I have two plants that got about half way to blue and then stopped, no idea why. I finally harvested the berries because they were starting to shrink and fall off.

The plants look totally healthy and are growing great, no idea what happened.

RM

Hi Riverman, your experience is interesting. Could it be that the berries stop ripening due to season change? All in all, blueberries are a strange lot indeed!

Mine are doing the same thing. Two different cultivars, and they’re both half ripened and holding.

they’re both 2 yrs old now, and we had a VERY hard cold snap this year (I’m in Texas...( you may have heard of our Power outage this year all across TX.)

Anyway, we have hot cold hot cold all winter here every year, so there’s no real extended cold period... ever. We might be in shorts and 75 degrees today, and Parkas at -3 tomorrow.

min wondering if that’s why mine are struggling. I have no idea what the cultivars are, I got them both at our local big box stores, so I assume they only order varieties which are suitable for our zone. Upon reading about this issues, I’m thinking it’s either lack of extended cold weather, or.. lack of acidity.

My blueberries are doing the same thing. I live half way between Houston and Galveston. This is Year 3. I got real excited when bunches of small, green berries started to form in big quantities. but they are still small and green. Someone suggested iron for the remedy.

Will they ripen?