 I'll start off on some planting and pruning. An important step is getting a good plant to start with. And you can buy plants bare root and you can buy plants in containers. I always like the plants in containers better. And there's a big difference, but just because it's a one gallon pot or a three gallon pot or whatever, there are differences between canines. You got a nursery, know your nursery, get a picture of the plants. Don't just go by price or container size. I can put a small plant in a big pot, but that might not always mean it's a three or five gallon plant. Plant spacing, it depends, but normally on a rabbit eye plant, 12 to 14 feet apart between the rows. Now that 12 is an absolute minimum. And what Jacob was saying about the equipment that gets in there, that is a, if you want to drive away between them, they may need to be 30 or 40 feet apart between one row and another. It depends on what you want to drive between them, but 12 foot by far is a minimum. 14, 15 or 16 might be better, but it all depends on what equipment you want to get between them. Rabbit eye plants are planted five to six feet apart down the row. If you want a hedgerow type system, if you want to be able to walk all, and that's the most productive on a per acre basis. If you're wanting to walk all the way around a plant, obviously they would be further apart and they may be 12 or more feet apart down the row if that's what you want. I like the row and you mow down one side and up the other and the hedgerow system is my favorite. We plant the plants during the dormant season. And I will say, if it's a container plant, they can be sell out any time of year, but if you're not able to really hand water and tend to those, even the drip irrigation, I would hate to do this in the middle of the summer. So the dormant season is the way to do it unless you're just planting a few plants and that instance, if it's a container plant can be sell out any time of year. We can dig the hole a lot bigger than the root ball and maybe y'all heard putting a dollar plant in a five dollar hole, but the hole is important. And we joke a lot, is it a whole hole or a half a hole but the hole is extremely important. Can commercial folks, if that guy had the equipment they would subsoil a row and we would and Jacob Meachin did, I'm gonna skip over it but the organic matter, the pine bark or peat moss that's what we put in there. When we sell a plant out, all plants are, we say the word root bound a lot of times but it's the root circling that pot and they'll continue to circle even when we set the plant out. When we pull a plant out of a container I'll take a knife and cut slits around the sides of the root ball and that will get the roots growing out in different directions. You can massage the root ball with your hands but just slitting them with a knife is faster. One area that a lot of people, and this is not just with blueberries but it's with a lot of plants as they plant too deep do not plant in any deeper than it was growing in that container or where it was growing out of nursery if it was the bare root. I'd rather even leaving it up a little high is okay but do not plant it too deep. It will die. We see this a lot. Jacob mentioned the raised beds and I'm gonna move on just because he meant the raised beds especially in a long time statewide we think of planting rabbit eye plants and if you for instance plant the southern high bush they get root rot bad and if we don't mound those up they're not gonna survive long. So they need to be mounted up and this is a mound and it has pine straw around it but it is mounted up just as Jacob described and I've gotten to where I recommend this with rabbit eyes too. And years ago we didn't do this but it is extremely common to see that now. Jacob mentioned mulch I'm gonna move on so but mulching is extremely important. The weeds is just slows the growth down considerably. Now this is something that a lot of people don't wanna do but if we could remove the blooms the first year that we set the plan out. So if you set a plan out last winter if we could go pinch or rub these blooms off that plant would grow so much faster and people always ask me how big is the blueberry when it has fruit and I'm like well you know I've rooted them and they'll have bloom and have fruit the next spring or they'll bloom and then they'll have fruit the summer and I used to work at a nursery and people would wanna buy a blueberry yeah we always try to rub the blooms off cause the plant really almost grow twice as fast. I mean if you're wanting to grow a plant you would not want it to fruit that first year. And so you always got a few that you miss and this picture right as I took that picture I rubbed the blooms off and rubbed those berries off but that one on the right there that's just berries that I missed and you know at a big nursery you'll miss them and you'll have a few berries on and somebody will come out and they say pick me out a good plant and I'll pick them out a good plant and they're like no no no I want that with fruit on it. Well it's half the size of these others they grow so much smaller with fruit. Well, so think about all that stuff Jacob said and as I'm talking about and just keep in mind when an extension agent takes a picture at your place you're either gonna make the highlight reel or the don't do it this way section. And here we go with no man, no pine straw, no pine bar just dug holes and sell them out. These plants it's hard to tell how old they are I pass by this place all the time they just don't grow they're just sitting there but they're obviously not maintained no irrigation. I mean they're not maintained well and they're obviously not as productive either but somebody is coming out here mowing grass between all these plants. So there's a lot of time goes into this but I don't think what they're getting out is worth it. Weed control, mulching, pruning correctly irrigating those are all major chores that we have to do and keep up at a well we can say blueberries or most anything else. How productive is our plant gonna be when it's competing with the masses? All right, we're gonna talk about blue pruning and there's two times a year we prune blueberries and one time is in the summertime and the other time is in the winter so we do summer pruning and winter pruning. Basically any time of year we can cut off any plant that the branches are hanging low if it's dead or diseased. I'll get to the mature high in a minute and removing the big canes. Let me get into the summer pruning and we'll come back to some other things. So here I've got kind of a before and in the next slide will be after picture. A blueberry has fruit off of one year old growth. So what bloom to this spring that we will pick fruit this summer grew last year. So if I prune off all my new growth from last year my one year old growth in the wintertime I'm not gonna get a lot of fruit. So the summer pruning is done after you pick your last berries off of that plant which is by it depends on where you are in the state. It can be the end of July but it varies depending on where you're at. That's the time of year we would do summer pruning maintaining that mature high. And I said maintain it at six feet but that just kind of depends if it's much over six feet you can't reach up and pick it. So I want it to be at that high but maybe I want it to be less that all depends on who's picking and how high to reach up. If you ever pick a lot of berries reaching up to pick up at your head high in six feet high where's your arms out and get you tired if your hand picking chest high and waist high can go a little faster. So it all depends on the person. So here's this is the summertime and it's hard to tell there but what's been done a commercial guy might take we've done with a sicklemore before and I've done with like gasoline shears and shared them off at just over waist high. Then they'll regrow three feet through August, September, October and that's where the fruity is the following year. If it's a home situation I don't like that edge to look. So I'll go individually and cut out certain shoots that are getting up way over six feet. Now it all depends on the time and how many plants if you just got a few dozen plants I'd prune by hand but if you got acres I would use equipment. Wintertime pruning and this is after they get to be seven or eight years old and there's more again the blueberry has fruit off of one year old wood. Well, so you've got to grow this summer to make fruit next summer if that makes sense. With these older canes you don't get a lot of growth on these older shoots that's seven and eight and 10 and 20 sometimes years old it's puts on very little new growth. So if I've got very little new growth that means I've got very little berries that I'm going to be picking off of there. So we want to take some of these older canes and take them out. Now this is after year seven or eight. Well, it depends on the equipment. If you got picking machines I've worked on a blueberry farm a picking machine would pull some of the plants like this on the right may pull them up out of the ground they're too wide at the bottom plus the way a picking machine works it shakes the plant and the right berries fall off if there's a big a lot of shoots spaced all around at the base you got a big hole there that these right berries fall in and that's not what you want to happen. So it kind of depends on how you're picking but roughly speaking you want your plants about eight inches or maybe a little more than that wide at the base and anything that these new shoots that come up from the root system it's a Stolen Ifrus plant it'll be a shoot to come up from the root system. Anything comes up in the row we leave anything that comes up outside of that eight inches or so at the base we take out but that varies on what kind of if your hand picking that's a little different. We want seven eight or so beans grow there's too many in this picture on the right and after again a few years we start taking one or two of these big canes out a year. Now here's the question which canes do you take out? Well, one if it's damaged or diseased that would be how on my list to come out a lot of times it's the tallest one that comes out. A lot of times it's the oldest one so a lot of times it's the biggest, tallest is the oldest but another way to look at look at my picture here on the left there's these mossy looking growth growing on this shoot blueberry shoot and that's called lichens. Lichens is not killing the plant lichens grows on things that doesn't grow you'll see the lichens growing on the mailbox you'll see lichens growing on the side of a house or a rock it's not causing it not to grow the plant's not growing and then the lichens grow if that makes sense. So when I see the lichens that tells me that shoot is not growing. Well, that's usually the first one on my list I mean it damaged diseased and then some with lichens on it that tells me that shoot is not growing so that's the one I'm gonna take out. I said you take one to two of these canes out a year if you've been 20 years and not pruned sometimes we take out a whole lot more than one and again this is after they're seven or eight years old and we take that cane out at the base we'll let one of these new shoots grow in its place and as they're re-growing the blueberry can be aggressive growing they can grow several feet every time it grows 18 inches or maybe even 20 cut the top out of it keep it branching if we keep it branching we'll have a lot more fruiting wood a lot of times you'll see a shoot that's head high that don't have any branches on it and it'll have some berries on it but it would have had a lot more berries had we been pinching the tops out now that's hard to do when you've got acres and acres but if it's a home situation it's fairly easy to do. Here's a few things to think about more vigorous shoots generally produce larger berries so think about that when you're out there picking and trying to fill a bucket up if I had what can I do to get vigorous shoots well keeping these old shoots pruned out a blueberry the root system lives many years people ask me how long a blueberry lives and I usually my answer is I don't know but I'm picking berries off of a plant at my grandparents house every summer that was planted in the 50s so 70 years plus is not uncommon to say they can live a long time but the above that's the root system is that of the above ground portion if you prune it correctly that what you see above ground may only be seven or eight years old or less and which is the case on our place but more vigorous shoots generally produce larger berries so if I can keep these old canes pruned out let a new younger vigorous shoot fill that void hopefully my goal would be to have larger berries earlier wrapping fruit generally produce larger you know then later wrapping fruit on the same plant that's what we're talking about here with the picture on the third picture there on the right you'll see little white berries and they'll become red and then they'll wrap into blue but a lot of times later in the season on that same plant you won't see as many you won't see as big as big of plants as those first berries you start picking will be the biggest ones in the first and second picture there the first one is just a young vigorous shoot that had a lot of blooms on it and some berries this second picture there in the middle is an older shoot now it had to put on new growth or it wouldn't have bloomed and it wouldn't have set fruit but it does not set near the fruit that a younger shoot would so think about that and I don't know if we'll talk about it in this there's a bee called a Haberpote it's a southeastern blueberry bee that it pollinates our blueberries the honeybee and that's another story they don't have a mouth part long enough they kind of go in from the side of a bloom and pollinate it but it's that another bee that does the work on the blueberry so how do you like that picture? So that's the picture I took after I you do all these extension guidelines and just look at the harvest that you can get and all off the blueberries so I'll take any questions and I feel like I went over that fast but if you have any questions I'll be glad to answer them