It is all about chill hours, and you should compare the chill hours for your location with the amount listed as necessary for the varieties you've bought. I stick with the low chill cultivars of the Southern low chill myself, and find that there is enough difference between cultivars to get a fairly long season.

bahia, thank you for the response.

It is too late to return the high chill northern bushes to Lowes since they destroy all the trees that are returned to them. I will see how the four northern varieties fare in comparison with the four southern varieties I have (southmoon, misty, emerald, jewel).

I've had success with several different types of northern highbush blueberries in the north bay. According to Bay Laurel Nursery 'Chilling is achieved at temperatures approximately 45 degrees or below' which we get plenty of here in the Bay Area. As far as I have read the only people in the US who have to worry about getting enough chilling hours are those who live in Southern California and the South, and Hawaii of course.

It is reassuring to hear that.

I stumbled acrossed a website that show the amount of chilling hours for couple cities in the Alameda county and Union City get about 850 hours of chilling time. This is actually a lot higher than I anticipated but I sure was glad to find out about it.

To my surprise Pleasanton gets like 1200 hours of chilling time per year!

I had the same experience years ago when I moved to the Bay Area from Lake Tahoe. I didn't think we'd have many chilling hours around here and then I learned that it only had to be 45 degrees to be 'chill' enough. At that time I didn't even think of 45 as very cold, I figured it would have to be at least in the 30's.

Good luck with your berries!

No need to stumble around--here is the chill hour website (keep in mind they only keep track through February)

Carla in Sac

Here is a link that might be useful: Chill hours by California county

Thank sautesmom, it was the link that I came across couple of days ago. Bookmarked it for future reference ;)

Chilling hour calculations are often wrong or misunderstood; just try it and see what happens.

I agree with applenut. Just try it out. There are so many microclimates. I'm really surprised to see on that website that Napa locations like Oakville have fewer chill hours than a lot of Central Valley locations, or even Concord. It always seems a lot colder up in the valley in the winter, and I see much more freeze damage.

It's also interesting that there are such wide ranges of microclimates in a small area. In Santa Barbara county, chill hours range between 150 and 1500! And in San Diego county, they range from 60 to 800! Your 850 in Union City is not that much, actually. You're borderline for a lot of apple varieties, and you might have some trouble with those northern blueberries. I figure, it's generally better to get low chill varieties so you don't have to worry about whether or not it's going to be cold enough, since it won't matter.

Yeah I am going to try it out and see what happens to the high chill varieties. My Duke plant wasn't doing so well so I replace Duke with Southmoon. Down to three high chill varieties in my place. I will see what happens next year ;)