Blueberry Bushes (growing, trees, yard, nursery)

[gr8doglove]

Hubby and I love blueberries and want to grow our own. Yesterday we bought two bushes (Duke and Bluecrop.)

Before planting them, we would appreciate any advice/tips posters here can give us. Neither of us has a green thumb so we can use all the help we can get!

[johnny999]

Blueberries are acid loving plants. Your soil will need a ph of 5 or less for them to do well. My soil here is very alkaline, to the point where acid loving plants just die off. I built raised beds for my blueberries and used miracle grow potting mix and they do very well. I use ironite and blood meal to keep the growing mix acid enough for them. You can buy a soil test kit at Lowe's for a few dollars and check the ph, then amend the soil accordingly. Pine needles make a good mulch for blueberries due to the acidity of them.

[tcs1366]

mine died too. last one did not make it thru this past winter... never saw a bloom, nor a berry.
what a shame.

['M']

To make a long story short, our yard was very acidic...we planted 4 blueberry plants and they died off by the next growing season. We bought these at a nursery in pots. The raspberries lived, but the deer manage to jump over the fence to eat them at times. We live at 7500 feet, so our growing season is very short. Oh, well...it was a good idea It's so difficult to grow anything in Paradise ((( sigh! )))

[Phawk57]

I have read that coffee grounds can acidify the soil. I put my used grounds around the plants. They are only a couple of years old so I will see how it works.

[tcrackly]

Coffee grounds, pine needles, composted deciduous leaves. Around here blueberries grow wild and they thrive in clearings under oak and pine.

[gwynedd1]

Originally Posted by gr8doglove

Hubby and I love blueberries and want to grow our own. Yesterday we bought two bushes (Duke and Bluecrop.)

Before planting them, we would appreciate any advice/tips posters here can give us. Neither of us has a green thumb so we can use all the help we can get!

Hi gr8doglove,

Blueberries are on the extreme end of acid loving plants. They also have shallow hairless roots that drown easily. That is why they thrive in sandy peat which is acidic and quickly drained. So unless your soil meat these requirements , your plants will not do well. The best thing to do is plant them in an in ground 20-30 gallon container with the perfect soil mix.

[LABART]

We were growing blueberry bushes and they were doing okay (they were transplants and we were surprised they did as well as they did). Just as they were growing berries swarms of birds came down and just about every berry.
We may attempt to start over, but we are not sure if we want to. We have a very large bird population and we seem to be on the migration trail. Plus we have nice big oak trees that they like to hang out in.

[gr8doglove]

Thanks everyone for the helpful responses. I didn't know that about coffee grounds. We are going to buy a soil test kit from Lowes this weekend. The dirt in our yard has some clay in it. I like the 30 gallon container idea.

I'll keep everyone posted on how our bushes are doing after we plant them.

Oh, how long will it be before our bushes yield fruit?

And we are going to put a big, plastic owl in the yard to keep the birds away.

[johnny999]

I got a few berries the first year with mine. I tried the plastic owl and I had a mockingbird that would perch on it just before he flew down and helped himself to some berries.