This year, blueberries and other berries bloomed in record time and could be picked 14 days before they are usually ripe, according to SLU.
Now some blueberry rice has managed to flower and produce berries a second time. Something Per Jacobsson, who has picked berries for over 30 years, has never seen before.
– Discovering different things in nature is fascinating, says Per Jacobsson.
The heat triggers autumn flowering
– It is due to the warm start to the summer. May and June were much warmer than normal, which meant that the berries bloomed earlier, says Ola Langvall, SLU forest researcher.
He explains how it is that the berries can produce new berries once more in the same season:
– When the berries are ready for the year, they put a bud where the leaves sit. It is meant to strike next year, but when we have had such a hot summer, they can bring themselves to strike in the autumn instead.
Possibility of a second harvest
It takes five to six weeks from flowering to a ripe berry. But some heat is also required for them to ripen. So whether you have time to pick blueberries a second time depends on whether it will be a warm September.
– We don’t expect that heat, but it has happened that September gets warmer, says Ola Langvall and continues:
– It sometimes happens that berries bloom a second time, but it is not very common. We are studying this now, if it becomes more common due to climate change with a second bloom. It could happen more often in the future.
Not sure how next year will be
Ola Langvall cannot really predict how this flowering will affect next year’s harvest.
– My guess is that there will be no flowers next year, on the branches that are blooming now. But there may be other branches that may flower on the same bush, so it is not certain that you will notice the difference.