How to Grow Blueberries A Complete Growing Guide

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener channel in today's episode we've got another complete growing guide planned for all of you and it's a complete growing guide on blueberries so i'm really excited about today's episode if you do like this episode you'll probably like all the other complete growing guides that we've done so i will link a playlist that we have that has i think we're over 30 complete growing guides now and i'll link that playlist so you can check it out because if you want to grow things like tomatoes peppers eggplant you know potatoes you name it i've probably done a video on it and so it'll be a good resource for all you to check out now if you do check it out and you notice that i've not done a video on something let me know in the comments box down below i would love to add to that playlist and i always love growing new things and showing you all how to grow things so let me know now with that being said let's jump on into today's video all right so when you get your blueberry plants these ones come in a soilless growing medium and they are a plug if you get bare root you're going to treat them slightly differently if your blueberry plants are bare root you're going to soak them in water for about two or three hours before this step now if they come in a in a plug and they are actually uh and they actually have the growing medium included like these do really healthy high quality plants um you can actually continue on with this video so if they're bare root you're going to soak them for two or three hours and then come back to this part or if they're like this we can just continue the first thing you want to do is very counter-intuitive and it actually is kind of scary for a lot of gardeners but what you want to do is you want to take the the the cell and you want to divide it in half and rip and what you want to do is you want to rip it about 75 percent of the way and what you'll notice is that then you have two sides that kind of flop like that and that is actually going to increase the root size it's going to increase root productivity it's actually going to encourage new roots help the plant come out of dormancy better and because this plant is dormant the damage to the roots really will be nominal it really won't notice because the fact it's not growing yet it won't notice that you've ripped it up and tore those roots and that's going to allow the plant to have a much larger root system which is going to host a larger healthier plant so that's the first thing we do the next thing i want to talk about is i want to talk about soil soil is a really important thing no matter if you're growing in containers or in ground soil is probably the most important component to growing blueberries successfully because blueberries love a very acidic soil blueberries prefer a ph of 6 to 6.5 so you don't want anything that's 7 or higher because that gets to be neutral or even alkaline so when it comes to blueberries you want to make sure that you fertilize them with a acid loving fertilizer or use a lot of peat moss peat moss is very acidic sphagnum peat moss is something that's actually going to amend the soil rather than just temporarily fix it so we're growing our blueberry in a container this is a seven gallon trade pot and so this is plenty fine for about three to five years of growth from our blueberry now if you're looking at longer than five years you want to consider either going in ground or going into a larger container after about three or five years we're going to move this over to a wine barrel and the wine barrel is where it's going to live for the rest of its life we have two wine barrels on either side of our porch and those are about 25 gallons so uh it just depends on how long you plan on growing it for it's going to be plenty fine in a container like this like i said for three to five years and in this in this soil here we have one part peat moss to one part compost it's super important to have that peat moss because it provides that acidity that blueberries love if you don't know if your soil is acidic enough i recommend doing a ph test it's very simple you can simply take some soil stick it in a glass of water shake it up and then get some ph test strips from your local pool supply company dip it into the water it'll tell you if your soil is slightly acidic or not you do need your soil to be in that 6 to 6.5 range for the the blueberries to do well the next thing you can do is after after a while though the peat moss is going to start breaking down it's going to actually start to give away some of its acidity the surrounding soil if it's not already acidic will actually kind of sap away some of the acidity from the peat moss because it will always tend to to revert back to its original ph so if your soil is like a ph of seven even if you make it slightly acidic for two or three years over time it will work back towards that ph of seven so what i recommend doing is regularly applying some granular sulfur this is really inexpensive you can get it from any garden supply store very very easy to obtain i just take it and i throw in a little container like this a little quick hack and just give a couple good shakes the drainage holes in the bottom of the container act as almost like a salt and pepper shaker and i will apply about a tablespoon of powdered sulfur or granular sulfur to the top of this container work it in it's incorporated and that's going to make sure that the soil is nice and acidic now the next thing you want to make sure that you have is really well draining soil the soil should not hold onto too much water blueberries are really finicky when it comes to too much water and they'll start to rot very easily so you want to make sure that the soil you have is very well draining regardless if it's in ground or in a container well draining soil is critical the next thing you want to make sure of is the location that you plant your blueberry now in containers you can move them around a little bit they're a little more mobile but regardless of where you plant them you need to make sure that they're going to get at least seven hours of sun blueberries like full direct sun so if you give them less than seven hours they may survive but you're going to notice that the fruiting is dramatically decreased so i prefer seven hours up to 11 hours of sunlight for blueberries the next thing a lot of people ask is temperature because blueberries are a perennial they're gonna come back year after year and there's really no temperature range that blueberries uh you won't won't grow in now the range of uh the range of growth when it comes to the zones is all the way up to zone three blueberries are extremely cold hardy now the next thing is when it comes to the types of blueberries you have two different types of blueberries that are predominantly found you have a low you have a low bush and a high bush variety low bush varieties are more of your wild ground kind of creeping varieties of blueberries you see these a lot in maine which is the wild blueberry capital of the world and they are really low to the ground or even in northern michigan we have some wild blueberries as well and they they really don't um they really don't get much taller than about a foot tall whereas the high bush varieties which is this variety right here the high bush variety this is a variety called darrow i absolutely love this variety and i also really like i really like patriot it's another wonderful variety as well as blue crop so a couple different good varieties for you to check out but these are all a high bush variety these are going to get between 7 and 11 feet tall so they get quite tall you can prune them lower if you need to but they will get quite tall on you now the final thing to note with blueberries is watering before we get planting is watering oh and fertilizer so when you're watering these you want to make sure that you water them regularly during the summer dry months especially if they're in a container they're going to dry out much faster and you want to make sure that in a container you're watering about every week it's going to seem like you're watering these a lot but that's because they don't like to dry out if they do dry out you're going to notice the leaves start to turn red once they turn red they'll face to brown and once they're brown they're dead so you want to make sure that you catch them at that kind of like light green phase before they start to turn kind of a golden kind of a golden uh orange rust orange because that is still a salvageable stage when you can revert them but that means they're getting too dry and it also could mean that the soil is not acidic enough all right and the final thing before we get this planted is fertilizer these are going to require two fertilizings per year we've already fertilized this this potting mix here that we're planting it in but regardless of where you're planting it or how you're planting it you want to make sure that you do give it two fertilizings per year we use an all-purpose fertilizer we use trifecta plus as our fertilizer that's what we use on our entire garden it's an all-purpose fertilizer that's intended for organic gardening so it's very gentle but it is very concentrated and it's going to last all season long which is great it has trace minerals microbes beneficial bacteria and fungi it's got the macro nutrients as well like nitrogen phosphorus potassium and it also has fast acting and slow release components to it so it's our preference but use one that you like and that you love and also you want to do it twice a year so we're going to do it once in the spring before it breaks dormancy and then once just before it goes dormant in the fall and that's just going to make sure that the plant is ready to go dormant it's going to establish a nice strong root system which is going to make it come out of dormancy much stronger in the spring so it's all about that cycle got to keep it healthy year round so now that you've done that the final thing is planting it's important that when you're when you are planting your blueberry you want to make sure that you do not bury it any deeper than its original soil level because blueberries are very prone to rot you want to make sure that you that you don't bury them deeper and we've also splayed the roots out we've kind of taken them splayed them out and set them flat that's going to increase the root mass of the blueberry really help it to root out nicely backfill there we go and we are planted it's that simple the final thing that i thought was worth mentioning is pests once you've got this planted and it's growing it should start flowering in about a year or two especially if it's one of the size once it starts flowering it will produce fruit having a cross is important that will help increase production but regardless of if you have one plant or five plants you're going to encounter pests the most common pest you're going to encounter is not a caterpillar or a borer or a moth or anything like that it's going to be birds birds are going to definitely be your biggest pest because they love the blueberries now the the best way to deter them is just to use bird netting it's just a fine mesh that you drape over your plants and i recommend doing that about two weeks before the berries start to ripen because birds will wait until the berries are at peak ripeness that is kind of their their preferred time to consume the berries but you'll notice that they go from a kind of a white to a kind of a green let's start green to kind of a frosty white and then that frosty white will transition to a pink and then to a blue and um or like a like a deep deep purple and um and so when it comes to the ripeness phase you want to start to cover them at the point when they're starting to go from pink to purple and that way you have enough time to cover them so that the birds don't hone in on them and and get them also if they get really big you can construct a cage to wrap them up with but blueberries are crop that really doesn't have many pests other than birds so it's one that is really easy to grow very rewarding and one that like i said can produce tons and tons of fruit for you on a given plant like this you can expect at full maturity to get three to five pounds of blueberries very easily upwards of ten pounds can be achieved so they're very productive very uh very rewarding like i said and it does help if you do have a second plant to help with cross-pollination but they are self-fruitful so they they will produce fruit on their own it just helps to increase production so consider that as well but with that being said i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new as always this is luke from the mi gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home and we'll catch you all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 130,057

Keywords: Premiere_Elements_2018, blueberry, easy, ez, growing blueberries, growing guide, guide, how to, how to grow, howto, quick, simple, tutorial

Id: e8vWDzLriNQ

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022