I started another blueberry thread earlier today asking about transplanting older blueberries from their original spot to somewhere else.

But today, I was repotting a blueberry I got for $3.50 at Lowes in November. It is about 3' tall, but kinda thin right now. So I easily pulled it out of it's store pot, and of course it's roots are pot bound, and circling around the inside of the pot.

But also there is a lot of much smaller matted roots that seem to just pull off of the ball. They are very thick, dense and knotted together. So I started loosening up the root ball as I always do with other plants, but I'd say that 1/2 of the smaller matted roots were pulled out to loosen up the rest. I've done that with many other shrubs and plants, but usually I dont remove 1/2 of the roots like that, but here it seemed necessary, plus they almost looked dead(many of them).

But the plant is alive and dormant, and I was reading another thread about blueberries, and someone mentioned how important it was to be careful with the roots and protect them, so now I'm wondering if maybe pulling out those crowded, dense smaller roots might have been a bad idea?

I figured it would give the larger roots more room to spread out and grow...No?