How To Harvest Blueberries for Optimal Sweetness

Wondering whether your first blueberry harvest is ready to pick yet? This guide will tell you everything you need to know about harvesting blueberries for the sweetest fruit.

It makes a huge difference in sweetness to pay attention to color, firmness and how easily they come off the branch, as blueberries do not ripen further once harvested.

Jump to:   When Are Blueberries Ripe? | How To Tell When Blueberries Are Ripe |Blueberry Harvesting Tips

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When Are Blueberries Ripe?

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.

Keys to Determine Blueberry Ripeness

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 doesn’t really play into it, since size can vary quite a bit between different cultivars. Your best indication is color!

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.

Blueberry Harvesting Tips

How To 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.

Preventing Bird Damage to Blueberry Plants

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

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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.