The last of the Blueberry harvest for this year

I have two kinds of of these bushes, one of them fruits a little later than the others. Due to this we get a few pounds of berries during the early summer. And then a few more ounces in the late summer. So I am picking the berries from this one bush that is a different cultivar from the others.

It is important to have a variety of cultivars when growing fruit, so I have two kinds of Rabbit Eye Blueberry bushes. One is called Powder Blue, and the other is called Climax. I am not sure which one is which. But you can tell they are different due to later ripening fruit. And when the leaves change colors in a month or two one will be further ahead than the other.

By having two kinds of bushes, the cross pollination done by my Mason bees and other pollinators will increase the yield and quality of fruit if you have different genetics. Its like the idea of a mutt dog does better in life than many purebreds. Its good to have some diversity in your genetics.

The same goes for my Cherry, Apple, and Blackberry trees and plants. You want more than one and to have different cultivars. You must also make sure they all flower during the same time as well known as "flowering groups" as if the two cultivars have drastically different bloom times that will not give you quality fruit.

I am quite surprised the birds did not pick all of these ripe berries. They tent to go wild for the other bushes earlier in the summer. Maybe there was some Hawk drama when I was not looking and all of them songbirds are scared again.

We are lucky where we live we can grow Blueberries, this is not the case for many regions. Where I live we are close to the mountains an get over 1000 chill hours a year (under 45F). Without this, many of my fruit trees like the Apple, Cherry and Blueberry would not fruit.

Though I cannot grow such plants as Avocadoes, Bananas, Oranges and many others due to our cold winters. So its nice to have these bushes and trees, at the cost not being able to have some others.

My Blueberry bushes are approaching ten years old and they are bigger than me now, in width and height.

Looks like I was a little late to harvesting some of these as they have already dropped.

A few of them are not ripe yet, so I will return in a couple days to get the ones just starting to turn.

Its only like a dozen of them, I got 3/4 of the berries already so if I miss them its no big deal.

A ripe Blueberry on the left and on the right one just starting to change colors. It will be ripe in a few days.

Unripe berries can be seen too, these would need a about a week or two to become ripe.

Here is my harvest just from this one bush that fruited later than the others. I already have a few pounds in the freezer, but will add these to the gallon ziploc we keep them in.

The smaller jar I will just keep in the refrigerator and eat them. I just eat them as snacks and will consume them all in a week or two. Next year we will do it all over again, with the flowers budding right around the time my Mason Bees are active. I hope to get many pounds of Blueberries again. I may never need to buy them from the store ever again with my four bushes. And the taste of them right off the plant cannot be beat!