I've always read that blueberries had shallow roots and only use about 12" of root ball depth. But I just had to move two 5 gal containers with blueberry plants (about 4 years old) and both had strong looking 1/4" thick roots going horizontally into the soil. The plants themselves (Southmoon and Emerald) are 2-3 feet high and wide.

I loosened up one of the 1/4" roots and than pulled the root ball out of the container. The root in question branched just inside the container and one branch wasn't attached strongly (to the root ball) so I could pull it out. The other branch (1/8" wide) disappeared into the root ball so I left it alone.

I tried to dig out the root from the second container but it was still going strong 1 1/2' from the container so I've left it alone for now.

The question is this: are these legitimate blueberry roots or some kind of opportunistic root from the ground finding a nice constant source of moisture.

I've seen willow trees (in containers) send out very strong roots that moved into adjacent containers...but those were tree roots. The nearest tree to the blueberry containers is a in-ground scrub oak about 8 feet away and a foot lower.

When I pulled the blueberry plant from it's container, I didn't see many roots on the surface of the root ball, so it didn't look rootbound in any way.

Any opinions on this? Are these blueberry roots? Should I whack them off anyway...

John