Pinching off some blooms to reduce the load is fine but...it has decided to flower now and not much you can do about it. I am in the same boat but you have the advantage because it is in a pot you could move it if it turned cold enough to damage the flowers.

Young bushes really should not be pruned much if at all except for at planting.

AH........!
Thanks for that.
What is "too-cold" for BB?
It's dropped to the mid 30's here on a couple evenings. However it's not a sustained cold. The afternoons typically rise to mid 50's on the coldest weeks
We typically see mid 60's throughout the days.
Today it's pushing 80 again.

I'll keep the pruning to a minimum. Just snip the dead wood and maybe the limbs that rub each other or hang too low.

The pruning sounds right. The young plants need all the energy they can get. Hit it with some ammonium sulfate once it starts to grow and it will take off.

Far as damage. The southern high bush fruit/flowers are most sensitive right after petal fall. 27 degrees or below will damage them....above 27 you are fine.

Hit it with some ammonium sulfate once it starts to grow and it will take off.

He's not kidding about that statement. Be careful not to add too much to your container or you may end up with a dead blueberry bush.

Can you post a picture? Your flowering may not be so crazy. I have an O'Neal that is already setting fruit.

If you do a good job of pruning on a three year old bush there should be no reason to pinch off buds or thin blooms.

I've learned over time to use a light hand when it comes to fertilizer. Applying high doses of N has always invited disease and pest problems for me. High N kicks plants into a vegetative mode, when what we want from a BB bush is for it to focus its energy on fruit. Also, it doesn't make a lot of sense to apply copious amounts of fertilizer and then thin out a bunch of the buds. That would be like supercharging a car and then only driving 55 MPH.

Here is a link that might be useful: Care of Southern Highbush Blueberries

Clint,

That is horrible advice.....did you get that from your gardening for dummies book again? Tell me.....what disease is caused by giving the BB nitrogen? Please post a link from a University site backing up your assertion that nitrogen will make a BB more susceptible to disease. Same goes with your claim that fertilizing a BB will cause pest problems...absolutely ridiculous.

The reason you want a young plant to get good doses of nitrogen to get it to size up. On a mature older plant is the time to throttle back the nitrogen.

Your claim that a lot of nitrogen will kick a BB in to vegetative mode.....well that is what you want. You want that young plant pushing new bull shoots and sizing up as that will increase your fruit yield. If you are trying to say that nitrogen will make the plant push green and less flower buds......again wrong.

Happy New Year bamboo_rabbit! I hope everything is going well for you so far. :)

Clint,

So far so good, thanks for asking. Now about those links?

Good to hear. How's your health? Blood pressure and everything OK? No complications from medicines and such?

Here is a link that might be useful: Search Using Google

Clint,

I know we have had disagreements in the past but to deliberately give Bshef false information to further some perceived feud?

Hi bamboo_rabbit, how's your health? Let me know what further information you need from me and what you believe to be false. If you leave out insults, attacks and argument baiting comments I will read your posts in full, and then we can interact with each other as though we were sitting in the same room. Otherwise, I intend to just skip over whatever you have to say.

I have a rabbiteye blueberrytree in pot I left it outside until mid January to get enough chill hours then brought it inside about 10 days ago. Today I saw it blooming should I take outside in the cold.

Foolishpleasure,

Outside in the sun is always best but not if the tepms will be so low that it hurts the flowers or buds. I have to ask.....why did you bring it inside? Moving the plant from a warm home to outside in the cold then back in can't be good for it. So perhaps leave it outside and only bring it in those nights it will be below 32?

The bad part about it is if you dont have a different variety of rabbiteye blooming you wont get hardly any fruit off of that plant this summer. There are some varieties that are partially self fertile but not many. Hopefully yours is. Do you have any other varieties that you can fake out also for cross pollination?

I have 4 different varieties between 5 bushes..
2-Southmoons
Jubilee
Misty
O'neil

But the one plant that seems to get "ALL" the attention from the bees/wasp in our garden seems to be our Crown of Thorns bush. They Love that plant.

Thanks everyone for all the discussion here about blueberry's.....!

I'm curious to do some research on self-watering containers...gets a little tiring lugging big containers of water out to the blues...!
Thanks again.

bshef,
If it's not too far,possibly consider a drip system with a timer.That's what I did after carrying too many five gallon buckets. Brady

Bshef,

Ive been wondering the same thing about self watering containers for blues. I saw a good video on You Tube about growing figs in self watering containers and I know they can be sensitive to wet feet like blues. His plants were huge and healty too. I have a 3 more plants that I need to pot up and will put one of them in a home made earth box pot and report my results. I assume with a earth box type pot system the potting media will need to be pretty fine to wick up the water so I will have to change my usual mix. Only time will tell.