Blueberries

Just came across this great site on blueberries. Hope you like it.
How to Grow Blueberries

Lavender Debs wrote:....... composted poo from my chickens..... bagged cow poo....... bagged cow poo ........ poo from agrio-business ............. poo ........ get rabbits so I can use their poo ............. poo.

Debs ....hoping that last paragraph was not TMI

Really Debs? You're worried we might be offended by a little poo talk? We LOVE talking about poo, info about poo, posting directions to free poo, etc. What would our gardens be without poo?

GG

I have four blueberry bushes that my boyfriend transplanted from his yard about ten years ago. They have been somewhat neglected but have done well anyway. They do get a lot of pine mulch tho. Here are some pics for this year.



I expect to pick them in about three weeks. Just in time for fresh blueberry pie for a July fourth cookout at my daughter's house!

Mabel,

I love seeing your blueberries. They are so beautiful!! I wish my 2 and 1/2ft. tall babies were looking as lush as yours.

llama momma wrote:Mabel,

I love seeing your blueberries. They are so beautiful!! I wish my 2 and 1/2ft. tall babies were looking as lush as yours.

+1

Goosegirl wrote:

Lavender Debs wrote:....... composted poo from my chickens..... bagged cow poo....... bagged cow poo ........ poo from agrio-business ............. poo ........ get rabbits so I can use their poo ............. poo.

Debs ....hoping that last paragraph was not TMI

Really Debs? You're worried we might be offended by a little poo talk? We LOVE talking about poo, info about poo, posting directions to free poo, etc. What would our gardens be without poo?

GG

They would be poo-less!
Lee

about to pick the second crop this year, all those green when I got the first crop
I grow in twelve gallon pots
I use azalea fertilizer and soil sulfur for the acid
and never let the roots get dry
and I get great berries in SOCal

SwampCatNana wrote:

Goosegirl wrote:

Lavender Debs wrote:....... composted poo from my chickens..... bagged cow poo....... bagged cow poo ........ poo from agrio-business ............. poo ........ get rabbits so I can use their poo ............. poo.

Debs ....hoping that last paragraph was not TMI

Really Debs? You're worried we might be offended by a little poo talk? We LOVE talking about poo, info about poo, posting directions to free poo, etc. What would our gardens be without poo?

GG

They would be poo-less!
Lee

Oh poo-ey! You got me!

GG

My first blueberry crop ever!!! I planted 2 in whiskey barrel and came out to this this morning!!

My blueberry bushes look like they are dying, it's not pretty, don't know where I went wrong but it's bad. Great pics phlict!

cheyannarach,
You should've seen our blueberry bushes last year. They were pretty ugly, too!
I'd post "before" pics if I could. Anyway here they are Today.



I dug a 1ft hole, 1ft deep, filled the hole with sphagnum peat and planted a bush in it. All the bushes are growing well, and most are fruiting well, too!

There's a bit of bad news, though! Here's what I found on the tip of one plant.

Any idea what's causing it? I'm removing the damaged leaves right away!

I'm going out for my fourth picking. I have four bushes that were transplants from my boyfriend. He had been growing them for about 40 years, and had rooted some from cuttings. The first time I only got about a cup. The second time, about 3 cups. The third time about six cups. Probably I will get five or six cups this time, and one or two more pickings. Tomorrow I am going to his home and pick from two bushes he had. Probably by next season his daughter will have sold his home, so I am going to take a few clippings to try to start even though it is the wrong time for doing that. The last year he was able he picked 17 one gallon zip-lock bags full from just these two bushes.

Do you happen to know what variety these blueberry bushes are?

No, he probably planted the originals when he built his home in 1951. I know he had these two bushes when I first met him in 1982. He started me some from slips he took from them. I have four bushes next to one shed. I also have two bushes that are very small on the end of my house that is around the corner from my garden, but I am not too sure about one. One had about a dozen berries this year, but the other one looks dead. However there may be some small shoots coming out near the crown, so I'm going to give it another year to see what happens. I am planning to put a 4x4 strawberry pyramid out from the corner about 8 feet.

memart1 wrote:I'm going out for my fourth picking. I have four bushes that were transplants from my boyfriend. He had been growing them for about 40 years, and had rooted some from cuttings.........

I have a few cuttings. How do I root them if I don't use the store bought rooting powder?
I also have some raspberry bush cuttings.

Lee

I don't know just how to go about starting new bushes, but I'm going to try. Stanley seemed able to grow anything. He had a traditional row garden which he direct composted since he built his home in 1951. Everything went into the garden -- vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, etc. just as we do our piles, but he also put in table scraps including bones, clam shells, used cooking oil, wood ash, rusty nails, etc. When he had the garden planted, he put those in a pile out back, but in the winter he would just flip a banana peel or something similar into the garden and it would lay there until spring when he would hand till it in. He had a friend who had a clambake/picnic grove and once or twice a year he would dump a five gallon jug of oil from the fryers all over the garden. His garden looked crappy all winter, but he had to use boards between the rows, and once he held a pitchfork up high and dropped it, and it went about 20 inches into the soil. I saw a parsnip that was at least 5 or 6 inches across the shoulders. To start my bushes he just took soil from his garden and put it in a deep box he had made, then put the cuttings on a slant in that soil. He kept them reasonably moist, and after they showed growth he added a liquid fertilizer. When he was ready to transplant them at my house, he dug a hole about 15 inches diameter and maybe 12 inches deep. He put in a mound of his garden soil, then spread the roots of the new plant over that and covered them with more of his soil. The last couple of inches he used soil he had removed from the hole. He watered everything in well, and kept it watered well for several months. Then just a once a year treatment with a commercial azalea food. Yesterday I picked about 3/4 of a 3 lb butter tub full. I did notice that one branch of one bush had berries that were drying up, and I think this heat wave has gotten to them. I gave all the bushes a real good soaking at the base, so we'll see what happens.

I was looking at blueberry bushes at a farm stand I visited yesterday. One was Patriot and I forget the other. They were priced $29.99 and $39.99 respectively.

Windsor.Parker wrote:cheyannarach,
You should've seen our blueberry bushes last year. They were pretty ugly, too!
I'd post "before" pics if I could. Anyway here they are Today.



I dug a 1ft hole, 1ft deep, filled the hole with sphagnum peat and planted a bush in it. All the bushes are growing well, and most are fruiting well, too!

There's a bit of bad news, though! Here's what I found on the tip of one plant.

Any idea what's causing it? I'm removing the damaged leaves right away!

Thanks so much for the encouraging pics! One of three of my bushes seems to be doing okay, I will post pics in a few days! Your plants look awesome! The damages leaves look to me to be the fault of the japanese beetle! Have you seen any of them around?

cheyannarach wrote:

Thanks so much for the encouraging pics! One of three of my bushes seems to be doing okay, I will post pics in a few days! Your plants look awesome! The damages leaves look to me to be the fault of the japanese beetle! Have you seen any of them around?

You're right! That's the culprit(s). I saw a couple of them over the last day or two. My mission for Today is to CRUSH every one of them I see.

Watch out japanese beetles, muahahahahahaa . Go get em!

cpl100 wrote:I was looking at blueberry bushes at a farm stand I visited yesterday. One was Patriot and I forget the other. They were priced $29.99 and $39.99 respectively.

Oh boy, that sounds crazy expensive unless they were already 4 ft tall or something... I got mine on special, it was three for twelve dollars. They were already about 2 ft tall and blooming. There were different varieties to choose from which was nice, since you are suppose to get at least 2 different ones. Mine are jersey, blue jay, and duke, they were grown locally at least thats what they told me.

I saw Patriot in the catalog from Territorial Seed, and it was only $ 15.00. I am sure they can be found at least much lower than $ 29.99.

They were a good size, at least 2 ft., and had berries on them. I will have to take more notice while I am out and about. 3/$12 and 2 ft. tall each sounds like a very nice compromise.

Edit: I just went to the Territorial site and checked out the Patriot blueberry plants (which are sold out if anyone else is interested). They come in 3.5" pots and are one year plants for $15. The ones I saw were much, much bigger than that for what it's worth.

Although I would love to plant some blueberry bushes this year, the price I found just is not in the cards after all the other start-up expenses.

jfkelly001 wrote:A clay soil is preferred, but dark or sandy soils are acceptable with sufficient watering. What I do is put 2 ft x 2 ft x 6 inches bottomless box where I want to place them. I dig down 10 inches and remove the soil and then refill the entire hole and up to the top of the box with moistened Canadian peat moss. Plant your blueberry by making a hole in the peat moss. Top of the blueberry root ball should be level with top of the box. Do not put any of the soil you removed in or on top of the box. This is the way the growers recommends and it has worked great for all 5 of my blueberry plants over the years.

also for this advice. And someone here wrote Alfalfa meal mixed in too. -

Whoever planted ours originally, stuck all 3 in a corner only 30-inches apart, so they sorta look like one Gigantic bush. So actually, two need to be Transplanted completely... Any idea on how far down... I can then prune these 3 six-foot bushes?