How to Pick Blueberries

Preparing for Blueberry Picking

Find a suitable container to hold your berries. It can be a bucket, a plastic bag, a basket, a bowl (preferably unbreakable) or some other kind of container. Just make sure the blueberries won't fall out of it. If you carry your berries in a bucket, you may want to add a rope on the bucket so that you can hang it around your neck or over your shoulder. You may want to put a plastic bag to your container to prevent staining and to make it easy to lift out all the berries without bruising them. You can secure the plastic bag with a rubber band. This also comes in handy if you fill more than one bucket––instead of needing a new bucket every time, all you need is a new bag.

Make you own container if you cannot find a suitable one at home. You can make a berry-picking bucket out of a piece of string and a 1-quart plastic container (such as an empty yogurt or cottage cheese container). Use a pair of scissors to punch two holes opposite each other near the top of the container. Kids––have your parents cut the milk jug for you. Take a piece of string long enough to fit behind your neck and down to your mid-torso, put an end of the string through each of the holes. Tie or knot the string to secure it. Put the string around your neck with the "bucket" hanging in front, and you'll now be able to pick with both hands! An excellent bucket can easily be made by taking a 1 gallon (3.8 L) plastic milk jug and cutting off 1/2 of the top and sides, making sure you leave the handle part on. You can then put the handle through your belt, and you now have two hands to pick with!

Selecting the Best Bushes

Search for a good blueberry bush. If you are picking at a public berry farm, the best bushes are probably towards the back, because the ones in the front have already been picked out by others. A good bush will have many good berries.

Start looking for good blueberries. A good berry is round, blue, and the skin should not be cracked. The general rule when it comes to blueberries is "the bigger, the sweeter". Pick them "as is" because they won't sweeten any further after picking. Do not pick berries that are: White––these berries have not even begun to ripen yet. Small and hard––chances are, these berries will be very sour, if you can even chew them at all!Pick Blueberries Step 3.jpg

Using Good Picking Techniques

Pick the blueberry. To pick a blueberry, simply attempt to roll it off the stem. Then, either put the blueberry in the bucket or eat it. If it doesn't come off with a very light touch, it's probably not ripe yet. Even if the color is right, it's best to just move on from a berry that won't come off with ease. If you find a "clump" of good berries on one stem, try cupping your hand around them, and rubbing them gently to loosen them; this should make them fall off. This is a good way to pick more than one berry at a time, because most of the bad berries will stay on the stem, since they don't come off as easily.

Continue picking until you have picked most of the good berries off the bush.

Move on to the next bush. Keep picking until you have all the blueberries you want. If you find yourself tempted to eat every blueberry you see, try "one for me, two for the bucket" as a solution to eating them all!

Wash all blueberries carefully before consuming.

Finished.