Anyone grow blueberries?

fishin coyote · Wednesday at 4:00 PM

RobertEH said:
Great info, thanks!

Question on PH.

My soil is 8ish. I planted a dozen or so bushes this year so they are in the process of establishing. How do you make PH changes to existing plants? I hear that adding elemental sulpher is good, but that you are supposed to wait a month to avoid root burn.

I have heard piling on sawdust/peat moss/pine needles at the base of the plants can lower PH, but it is a slow process. It is a long way to go from 8 to 4.5/5. I was toying with blending in small amounts of sulpher to the top soil to kickstart things, but that could be dangerous.

It also freezes hard here so I was planning to put peat and straw at the base before winter hits anyway. I will be re-applying the peat in the spring.

In that case I would put them in raised beds. Something simple with the box made out of 2x6s is usually sufficient.
The bushes will grow in a wide variety of soils although fruit production may suffer until they get conditions that they favor.

dieselscout80 · Wednesday at 7:15 PM

Paddy said:
Sounds like growing blue berry plants is a lot of work! Once you get a fruit set, the birds will clear you out.

Plant a peach tree! We get 500 peaches per tree. Peach trees grow like weeds. You do have to spray though

Here in SC I can grow both peaches and blueberries. The red clay here is acidic and I don’t do much to to get blueberries

to grow and produce good.

Peaches grow and produce but the bugs always seem to tear up the peaches.

The blueberries always taste great and when I get peaches they are very tasty too.

What do you spray on your peaches?

part-time-Farmer-NC · Thursday at 8:29 AM

I spray captan 80. I bought a few bags a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly it says to spray every few weeks. I generally spray 4+ times from bloom till about 2 weeks before harvest.

dieselscout80 · Thursday at 10:14 AM

part-time-Farmer-NC said:
I spray captan 80. I bought a few bags a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly it says to spray every few weeks. I generally spray 4+ times from bloom till about 2 weeks before harvest.

I need an organic alternative to meet household six requirements for the peaches.

I tried Neem oil, but I didn’t spray it during the bloom and I only sprayed twice so likely not soon enough nor often enough.

We’ve never had to spray the blueberries.

I typically drive 7’ t-posts around the four blueberry bushes and tie a ring of fence tape with 4’ pieces every so often and that has kept the birds away.

This past spring I didn’t put the post and tape up and still didn’t have bird eating the blueberries.

RobertEH · Thursday at 12:03 PM

Part-time farmer/paulsharvey/kennyG: Really appreciate the advice and I will be acting on it come spring!

part-time-Farmer-NC · Thursday at 1:09 PM

Glad to help.

Nothing beats a tree ripened peach. It's nothing like what you find in a grocery store to me. It's so good I am "ok" with a 2-3 years out of 5 harvest.

As for organic sprays, neem, sulphur, copper based fungicides they say work. I use captan because it works. I am spraying adverse, but in our climate if you want them you have to sprayem. I did use neem oil and copper based sprays but that was earlier on but didn't see much protection. Maybe there are better ones out there now. And like you mentioned maybe I wasn't applying it regularly enough to matter.

We never spray our blueberries.

As for birds, we are getting more and more in our acre of BB. I or my wife are out there fairly often as are pickers so that seems to keep them at bay for the most part. I'm not opposed to using #8's to cause them to stress out and leave too.

I'll have more time in the coming year to manage them better.