5 Tips to Grow Lots of Blueberries

[Music] hello everyone this is jack well in this video i'll cover five tips to grow lots of blueberries like these these blueberries are 30 pounds and they came from just one row of blueberries which is about 30 plants so let me share how you can grow lots of blueberries like this so let's get started tip number one the variety of blueberry now depending on the region that you live in you might want to go with another hybrid variety or a southern high bush variety another high bush variety requires more chill time they require medium to high chill time which is above 400 hours so if you live in northern states in the united states if you live in canada northern high bush variety is perfect for you however if you live in california texas or other states where it gets warmer in the summers and it doesn't get as cold in the winters you want to get low chill variety and that's what we have here these southern high bush varieties require low chill hours which is 200 or less hours of chill time now the southern high bush variety that i really like is star they grow really nice big berries and they're very sweet as well so let me grab these blueberries here you go quite a bit of blueberries from just one bunch all of these plants are full of berries and look at the size of these berries these berries are just absolutely massive and delicious and the best part these berries are organic tip number two soil preparation now if there's one plant you really need to prepare the soil for it's blueberries you need to add proper amount of compost fertilizer and sulfur to make the soil acidic to grow blueberries to prepare for planting blueberries dig a nice size hole at least three feet by three feet then for each plant add one cubic foot of compost add half cubic foot of wood chips into the soil and if you have clay soil add half a pound of gypsum use chicken manure fertilizer and add about half a pound to one pound per plant you can also grow blueberries in containers i prefer at least 15 gallon size containers to grow blueberries fill your containers with half native soil and half compost you do not need wood chips in containers now when we first planted blueberries here i went with a shovel or a ripper behind a tractor and i dug a trench in the ground which was 18 inches deep then we added compost and we also added wood chips into the ground wood chips naturally make the soil acidic when they degrade and they also add organic matter in the soil as well as they degrade we also added gypsum because we have clay soil and gypsum helps to break up the clay swell for roots to grow really well and the most important ingredient we added sulfur we added elemental sulfur which is approved for organic farming and gardening we incorporate that into our rows and sulfur starts to work in just four to five months to lower the ph of the soil so i recommend preparing your soil at least three to four months in advance before planting blueberries now if you want to plant blueberries in containers or you want to get a head start on planting blueberries and plant them right away you can also buy soil acidifiers you can add them to water and water your plants that way that will help to lower the ph level of the soil as well now that leads us to tip number three blueberries love acidic soil they love soil ph of 4.5 to 5.0 in order to lower the ph level of your soil you can add sulfur into the ground like i mentioned before you can also buy soil acidifiers that you can add into your water and then water your soil that way or you can just use plain old vinegar you can use a cup of vinegar to a gallon of water and keep watering your soil that way and keep checking the ph level of your soil and once you hit 5.0 that's when you want to stop now you also want to pay attention to the ph of your water now most water is neutral which is 7.0 which is over water here so if you keep watering your blueberry plants it will keep raising the ph level of your soil so keep checking the ph level of your soil often i recommend every two weeks and if the ph starts to rise you can use soil acidifiers or you can use vinegar to lower the ph level of your soil now tip number four watering now blueberries love moist soil they don't like to be dried out they can withstand dryness for about a day or two but if you go longer than that they will not make it and at least they will not produce good blueberries so in order to produce big bushy blueberry plants that grow lots of large blueberries you have to keep your soil moist at all times however every week or every other week i use my soil moisture meter and i check soil from 6 inches to 12 inches to make sure it's always moist and it doesn't dry out if the topsoil dries a little bit that's fine but you always want to keep the soil underneath six inches moist for blueberries at all times to retain moisture you can also mulch your blueberry plants surround your blueberry plants with wood chips or straw and that will help in retaining moisture and also in adding organic matter into the soil now how much you want to water your blueberry plants depends on your temperature and the type of soil that you have now here in california we have clay soil and we don't have extreme temperature we don't get way too hot or way too cold in winters we get up to 100 degrees 104 in summer we get up to 32 degrees in winter so in winters when it rains i don't water at all in spring and in fall i water every other day or every two days and in summer when it gets to over 90 degrees or even in deeper digits in 100 405 degrees i water every single day now how much water do i provide i have drip lines that have emitters that produce half a gallon of water per hour and i have emitters every 12 inches every foot and i water for two hours so each meter provides one gallon of water every foot so that's how much i'm watering i also have a video on how often you should be watering your plants depending on multiple factors so check that out if you're interested now if you follow these tips you can grow lots of blueberries and very large blueberries as well and when your plants are producing a lot of large blueberries guess who's interested the birds now in order to deter the birds i use this owl decoys i also have an out liquid that flash wings in the wind now these owl decoys work really well in order to deter the birds i also have over dog lily which loves to run after birds and chase the birds so she works really well to deter the birds as well and the good thing is that lily doesn't eat blueberries i hope you really enjoyed this video and i hope you got lots of information to grow lots of blueberries like this and i'll see you another video [Music] you

Channel: Daisy Creek Farms with Jag Singh

Views: 164,785

Keywords: grow, plant, garden, gardening, daisy creek farms, farm, farming

Id: fC90Coxu_ek

Length: 6min 42sec (402 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022