I have been wanting to start a blueberry patch for a while now. My wife got me started early this year by buying a set of four plants from Home Depot (maybe it was Lowe's). The container had a Grape plant, and Raspberry plant, a Blackberry plant, and a Blueberry plant. Well, I planted them all and then went online to read up on them. To my chagrin I learned that blueberries require an acidic soil. I had no experience in gardening while maintaining proper soil Ph and I didn't really know where to start. I knew there were kits you could buy to check soil Ph, but the last time I looked at one (over 10 years ago), they were about $10 a piece and only contained 2 - 3 tests. That seemed like a little too expensive given I would need to check Ph a couple of times per year for the blueberries. I'd be better off just buying blueberries at the store. Well, I found a $10 electronic Ph and fertility checker at Home Depot, so that got me hooked on growing blueberries.
I went online again, and started researching their growing season, yield, varieties, etc. In my research, I very quickly stumbled upon the "As seen on TV Little Giant Blueberries." Now, I am as skeptical as the next person about all thing "as seen on TV." However, I wanted more blueberry plants and the thought of having 16,000 blueberries per plant per year and the possibility of having them the same year of planting or the year after was too good to pass up. I was having a hard time find yield numbers written as "per-plant" for the home gardener, and 16,000 sounded like a rather high number, but it was the only numbers I could find early in my research. So, I bought a set of them. They didn't seem all that expensive. They were supposedly a two-year old plant that would make berries at the end of first year of planting if you lived in a warm climate or the year after planting in a colder climate. I am in Ohio in a 5b hardiness zone (-10F - -15F in the winter, typically). I figured it would be the next planting year before I saw any berries.
Well, I later found out that blueberries don't produce until at least year 3, and you are supposed to remove the blossoms their first year because the setting of fruit that early can stunt the plant growth. I also found some bad reviews about the Little Giant blueberries (after ordering) that made me skeptical of what I was going to be getting. I saw a picture of a little brown box which supposedly had a little plastic bag with three rubber-banded twigs in it, which were supposed to be the 2-year old plants. Most people stated that they had faith and planted the twigs only to never have them do anything. Well, my little brown box finally arrived in the mail, and when I opened it, I pulled out a little plastic bag with three little rubber-banded twigs. I was a bit annoyed, but I had already read about this online so I was not totally shocked.
In the meantime, I had planted the stick from the store and had been disheartened to have it not really do anything. So, when I got the Little Giant Blueberries in the mail (I had just gotten home from work), I got back in my car and drove out to Home Depot and bought a bag of Sphagnum Peat Moss and some pots to plant the blueberries in. In case you don't know what Sphagnum Peat Moss is, I can tell you that it is an ancient moss that grows in swampy/boggy areas. It gets dug out of the ground in various fields that used to be those swamps/bogs. Then it is bagged and sold. It is acidic, organic matter, and holds water like crazy. Back when I was in Michigan working for an ISP, I handled the wireless broadband installations for the Michigan Peat Company. Their shop was absolutely coated in this very fine dust from the Peat. It was insanely dirty. Anyway, you can guy the stuff at Home Depot or Lowe's for about $14 per 4 cubic feet. It looks like this:
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To plant these little twigs, I mixed 50% Peat Moss, 35% potting soil, and 15% sand together and put them in the pots I bought and watered them until water started coming out of the bottom of the pots. I figured it was the best chance they were going to get in terms of growing.
Well, to my complete and utter amazement, about a week after planting them, they all three had at least one new shoot coming out of the main branch that was a good 3 inches long. I was rather stunned at their rapid growth and response. Meanwhile, my stick from the store was still sitting where I planted it not really doing much. It had been planted for a good month at that point, and it had just made some leaves on the existing shoot. A tiny extra shoot had started to grow out of the main stick, but a rabbit ate it off before it had time to do anything.
I continued doing research and blueberries, and finally decided that I did not want to wait 5 - 6 years before we had enough blueberries to tide us over for a year. So, I found a nursery here in Ohio and ordered some certified 1 and 2-year blueberry plants from them. They had all kinds of growing instructions and listed the production season for each different variety of plant. I picked some early, mid, and late season plants that would give me blueberries as early in the year as is possible here in Ohio, and would grow them as late in the year as possible. I wanted to order just 2-year plants, but they did not have 2-year olds available in all the varieties I wanted to order. So, I made do with some 1-year old plants, too. Unfortunately, they would not arrive until October.
Well, they have finally arrived. And that is what this blog post is all about -- planting blueberries.
First, you need to prepare a bed of soil for the planting. I have a 25' section of fence which I partly prepared earlier in the year by removing the grass. I then used a shovel to dig about 10 inches into the ground and overturn and chop-up all the soil. I did this for the entire 25' section I had reserved, and I made the dig about 2.5' wide. This section of fence is one of the most ideal places for receiving sunshine on my property. I emptied my nearly full compost bin onto the area I had dug up, which added about an inch of organic matter across the entire length. Then, I bought some more Sphagnum Peat Moss from the store, and dumped it out on the section of dirt.
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I spread the peat moss out over the area so it was about 4" thick. I used the remainder of my original bag, plus three additional entire bags. The peat moss is extremely dusty when it is dry, so before you mix it into the soil, you need to moisten it. I used my garden hose with a sprinkler attachment and set the water pressure on low. Then I sprinkled the peat moss until it all looked wet.
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After it all looked wet, I used the shovel to stir the peat moss and expose the dry stuff.
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Then, I sprinkled it all again.
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I repeated the process over and over again (maybe 5 - 6 times) until the peat moss was all thoroughly moistened (not soaking wet). After doing this along the entire 25' length of reserved space, I sprinkled some Organic Blood-meal over the peat moss, following the directions for the amount needed per square foot. Then, I spent a good hour or more turning and chopping, turning and chopping, and turning and chopping some more. The goal is to get the dirt and peat moss and the organic compost evenly mixed together and broken up into lots of little pieces. After everything was thoroughly mixed, I walked all over the dirt, using my body weight alone to pack it down and remove excess air from the soil. The blueberry plant roots are very fine and will dry out quickly if they are not in full contact with the soil. However, you do not want to over-pack the dirt, as that will inhibit the root growth. This is how it looked when it was all done:
Next, I needed to check the Ph level and soil fertility before planting. I wanted to be right around Ph of 4. To do that, I needed to soak the ground where I was going to perform the test.
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After letting the water soak in for a few minutes, I inserted my Ph tester into the soil and took a Ph reading after allowing 1 minute for the reading to stabilize.
You can see that Ph level was pointed right at the 4.0. That was right where I wanted it, so I switched to soil fertility.
As you can see in the photo, we are just inside the Ideal range in fertility. This is where we want to be for right now. In the spring, I will start adding some fertilizer each month throughout the growing season, following the instructions on the package.
Once I was certain that the soil did not need further amendment, I dug all of my holes. I stared one foot in from the end of the row and dug a hole. Then I measured 2.5' from the center of the hole to where I dug my next hole. I continued this all the way down line, which left me with my last hole 1' from the other end of the line for 9 holes in total. At this spacing, I expect the blueberry plants to form a hedge row when they are mature. Since the roots typically do not extend out beyond the foliage, this means that the roots and foliage will extend out about 15 inches in all directions from center of the plant when it is mature. That is why the row is 2.5' (30 inches) wide, and why I placed my holes 1' in from the ends of the row.
I started with planting the 2-year plants from the nursery. These are what I would expect a real 2-year plant to look like:
Before I plant a new plant (especially one that was established elsewhere and has a fully formed root ball), I soak the roots.
Then, I drop a scoop of peat moss into the hole (right below the roots of the plant) and set the plant on top of the peat moss.
Because the blueberry plants are acid-love and peat moss is naturally acidic, the peat moss against the roots will help keep the acidity level in the correct range for the duration of the planting. Also, since the roots do not extend out very far from the center of the plant, this will help retain moisture and allow the roots to absorb the correct amount of nutrients that they need. So, I also tossed a scoop of peat moss over the top of the roots before filling in the hole.
After filling the hole, I gently press down all around the base of the plant to ensure that the soil is in full contact with the roots. However, I am very careful not to push too hard and damage the fragile roots.
This is the other two-year plant that I purchased from the nursery:
After planting the two-year plants, I planted each of the one-year plants form the nursery, then the three Little Giant Blueberry plants, followed by the stick from the store. This is the whole row of plants:
These are the three Little Giant Blueberry plants that came as tiny little twigs of nothing, after growing for about 5 months.
The second plant has been pruned heavily because it had several shoots that were going straight out to the side and two that were almost growing down. I cut those off, because we only want shoots that grow up. The third one also had some pruning done on it, but not as much as the second. The first one only had a few spindly shoots removed at the bottom.
Finally, this is the twig from the store, after having a good 6 months to grow:
When I removed this twig from its pot, I noticed something odd about it. It looked like a very thick piece of wood with a clean cut on both sides of it, a few tiny little pieces of root poking out from it, and the branch with the leaves on it. It looks like they took a cutting out of the middle of a blueberry plant, forced it to root, and as soon as it had any roots at all on it, they packaged it and shipped it for sale. So, my recommendation is absolutely do not buy a blueberry plant from Lowe's or Home Depot. Only buy them from an established blueberry farm or nursery in your area which certifies their plants disease free and labels them all for you.
The Little Giant Blueberries are a complete enigma. I thought there would just die like everyone else online said. However, when I removed them from their pots, their roots had completely and totally filled the entire 9" pots from side to side and top to bottom. The whole pot contents came out as one big root ball. There are more roots on the Little Giant Blueberries after 5 months in those pots than there are roots on the 2-year plants that came from the nursery. I am completely baffled by how fast and ferociously the Little Giant Blueberries have grown, given the way they looked when I got them. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any reliable information on which hardiness zones they are good for or how many pounds per plant they produce per year. Assuming they produce like a typical blueberry plant in the 7 - 10 lbs. per plant yield, I should be looking at around 100 lbs of blueberries per year when all 9 of these plants are mature (assuming the one from the store survives). That should give my family about 1/3 lbs of blueberries we can eat per day and have blueberries almost year-round. Of course, that also assumes that the birds don't eat them all on us!
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