When to Pick Blueberries: Harvesting Tips for Sweetest Fruit

Blueberries don’t ripen after picking, and if you harvest them too early, you will get sour berries that will never sweeten up. I grow 600 blueberry plants at HeathGlen Organic Farm for the farmers’ markets, and have found that the single biggest factor in sweetness is picking at the right time.

The key indicator is color: wait until berries are completely blue with no purple on the blossom end. Here’s how to identify perfectly ripe blueberries and get the sweetest harvest, whether you’re picking from your own bushes or buying at a farmers market.

Quick Summary: Pick blueberries when they’re completely blue from top to bottom with no purple at the blossom end. Ripe berries have a powdery “bloom,” feel firm (not soft), and release easily when gently flicked. Berries ripen in stages: pick about 1/3 of a bush per week over three weeks. Plant early, mid, and late varieties to extend harvest 6-7 weeks. Hand-picked berries are sweeter than machine-harvested because you can select only fully ripe fruit. Read time: 6 min | Experience level: Beginner

Jump to:   When Are Blueberries Ripe? | Blueberry Harvesting Tips | FAQ

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When Are Blueberries Ready to Pick?

Not all the berries on a shrub will be ready to pick at the same time. You can usually pick roughly 1⁄3 of the blueberries on a bush with their first flush, the second 1/3 a week later and the last 1/3 another week later.

If you stagger your different varieties to include early, mid, and late season varieties you should be able to get a 6-7 week harvest. This is true whether you are growing them in the ground or growing them in pots on a deck or balcony.

This chart on ripening times of various blueberry varieties can give you a good idea of what to expect for a harvest season.

Tip: Use the fact that not all blueberry bushes ripen at the same time to stretch the season by planting at least three different shrubs: one early variety, one mid-season one, and one late one.

How Do You Tell If Blueberries Are Ripe?

A ripe blueberry is plump, has a powdery layer (called ‘bloom’) and is an even, blue in color from the top to the blossom end.

It should be nice and firm, but not soft, and come off the bush almost by itself. I use my thumb to gently flick it off the plant and into the bucket.

Size varies by variety and isn’t a ripeness indicator. Your best indicator is color!

Last Stage: Showing blue from top to bottom of berries

When trying to figure out whether your berries are ready to pick, pay special attention to the the blossom end, where it connects to the stem. If there’s still any hint of red or purple there, just wait a little longer. You’ll get an pretty tart blueberry if you pick it while the blossom end is still purple.

Tip: There are a select few exceptions to the color rule. Specifically, pink blueberry cultivars like ‘Pink Lemonade’ and ‘Pink Popcorn’ are ripe when the berries are evenly bright pink.

How Do You Pick Blueberries?

Because blueberries are a soft fruit, you should be gentle while picking them. Ripe ones will come off the bush with minimal pressure, so don’t rip them off! This can damage the berry, which causes it to spoil much quicker.

(Disclaimer: if you do “accidentally” damage a blueberry, you’ll have no choice but to eat it right away to prevent spoilage. Those are the rules!)

Commercial blueberry farms use harvesting machines, which is faster but also less accurate. The handheld harvester below is a small scale version of what the commercial blueberry farms use. As you can see, there are a lot of unripe purple berries in the hopper, which means those will be quite tart.

At home, just pick them by hand: it allows you to select the ones that are perfectly ripe, so you don’t end up with sour ones in the mix. This is also why the hand-picked blueberries you get at the farmers’ market are so much better than machine-picked supermarket ones.

For some ideas of what to do with all of those sweet blueberries, check out these sweet and savory blueberry recipes for fresh or frozen blueberries.

How Do You Protect Blueberries from Birds?

The birds in your garden know exactly how to tell when blueberries are ripe. They tend to start flocking to them as soon as they start turning purple, sometimes stripping a shrub bare before you can even have a taste.

When it comes to dealing with birds, it’s a choice between setting up some netting once the bushes start blooming (which can be a bit of a hassle) or just deciding to share with them.

Installing some bird deterrents may also help, but unfortunately, most bird are smart enough to figure those out quite quickly.

You could try growing blueberries in pots and then keeping them close to the house where you have a better chance to keep the birds at bay.

If you have to pick the berries before they are completely ripe (to avoid bird damage), here are a few things you can do with unripe blueberries to at least salvage part of the crop.

FAQ

To see how we have used the blueberries from our harvests over the years, check out my Blueberry Cookbook. It covers more than 80 recipes that range from sweet to savory using fresh or frozen blueberries.

Resources:

Lin, Y., Huang, G., Zhang, Q., Wang, Y., Dia, V. P., & Meng, X. (2020). Ripening affects the physicochemical properties, phytochemicals and antioxidant capacities of two blueberry cultivars. Postharvest Biology and Technology, 162, 111097.