Blueberries in Shadier Spots?

[ross]

Hello bloobs...

I was wondering if I can get away with planting blueberries in a spot with only 6 hours of light. Thoughts?

-Ross

[Blueboy1977]

Git er dun!

[ross]

Lol, is that a yes?

[fruitnut]

Yes, blueberries are pretty tolerant of some shade. It might cut yield and in fact you should limit crop load so as to make the berries sweeter. But don't let that stop you from trying bb.

[Gina]

I had a short row that got about 7 hours of sun, and they did quite well. There was less water stress (no rain in summer here) and they fruited just fine. I don't recall any difference in flavor compared to those in the full sun, but then I wasn't looking for that. I'm in a long growing season however and don't know if that would matter much.

You can get good berries that are relatively inexpensive these days, so if you try and it fails (which I doubt), not much to lose other than time.

[anhkiet]

I started experimenting with shade this year. We bought a flipped home and it came with a bunch of boxwoods that died last summer (I would have gotten rid of them anyway). So I'm trying my luck with blueberries.

I get about 2 - 3 hours of sun and found a few articles mentioning that shade would lower yield. Then I found some research on how Blue Crop responds to various levels of shade. IIRC, in their trials, they mentioned that in their densest shade experiment, leaf nodes were farther apart, leaves were larger but thinner, and each cluster of flowers resulted in fewer fruit set. If I ever find that research file I downloaded I'll add more details.

Knowing this, I chose Sunshine Blue as replacement plants for those boxwoods. My reasons were:

- It's evergreen here in WA, so it almost serves the same purpose as boxwoods (thought not as pretty in the winter).
- It's small/compact, growing to about 3 feet
- It has small leaves and compact growth, so a little bit of leaf enlargement and internode elongation may not be a bad thing
- They usually have a lot of flowers (at least the ones in the sun do) to make up for lower fruit set

I'm still unsure how successful this experiment will be, but I'm really crossing my fingers .

[Inkfin]

I ....................... and found a few articles mentioning that shade would lower yield. Then I found some research on how Blue Crop responds to various levels of shade. IIRC, in their trials, they mentioned that in their densest shade experiment, leaf nodes were farther apart, leaves were larger but thinner, and each cluster of flowers resulted in fewer fruit set. If I ever find that research file I downloaded I'll add more details..................

Good research article. Thanks for sharing the article with us and good luck with your experiment. Let us know the results in the future.