Mr Clint,

looks like you have your pot mixture and PH to the science. Any hints. Just bought another 6 bluecrops.

Tony

Couple of my Emeralds for comparison. And a southern Belle (Not).

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This post was edited by bamboo_rabbit on Tue, Apr 8, 14 at 12:09

tonytran, thanks for the kind words. :)

I basically just follow the directions at DWN:
* Blueberries In Containers
* Growing Blueberries

I use my 8.2-8.4 pH water straight from the garden hose and fertilize with Dr Earth's Organic Acid Lovers formula and add a little soil sulfur in the Spring. I have six BB plants total and that's enough for me and my wife for fresh eating. I have never measured the soil pH in my containers.

mrclint:

You do realize that you are not being fair to those of us in the Northeast.

I might prefer waterboarding to the torture of waiting I have to endure here.

Otherwise BEAUTIFUL !!!

Mike

mes111, understood. You have time to plan things out really well and kind of let the seasons come to you. Gardening year round can be non-stop work if you let it be, which is why I do EVERYTHING as easily as possible. And I do work in stages, not trying to do everything all at once. Fortunately, I can say six BB are enough, along with over 30+ fruit trees, and go with that happily. :)

Clint,

I don't mean to upset you but perhaps you should check the PH? I'm sure you took a picture of the best part of the plant but your plant is quite chlorotic, clearly visible on many leaves.

Just my opinion of Emerald but to me it only has one outstanding attribute, high yield. Possibly the highest. But I'd rate eating quality below average. Perhaps if the yield were thinned down to average the fruit would rate average.

It's too spreading for my taste even in a pot. The shoots have to be trained or pruned hard to get any height. It won't set without pollination.

Springhigh on the other hand tastes vastly better, sets without bees, and has ideal canopy structure. Yield is lower but not much assuming you thin Emerald. For someone who wants to start with one SHB, I don't know of a better candidate than Springhigh.

mes111, where are you in z5/7? I have a cousin in z4 that is just now starting gathering together stuff together for tomatoes and peppers indoors. With the shorter growing season comes more planning and precision. :)

Fruitnut, most of my BB never lost all their leaves this year. That is the case with my Emerald as well. The growth habit is sprawling and thick, so it does need a bit of elbow room. Granted I'm not a connoisseur by any stretch, but I like the taste just fine. Seems sweet, tart, juicy and not mushy. It's a handsome plant overall.

Fruitnut,

Springhigh sounds really good. I would have already ordered one if I am not running out of space. Still debating.

Mclint

I have two places. My year round is in Nassau County NY bordering New York City.. I have 3 apple, two pears and 5 stone fruits here.( zone 7)

My second place is in upstate NY. There I have my 70+ tree orchard. 35-40 varieties of apples, 12 pears, 7 apricots, 5 cherries, 8 peaches/nectarines, 4 plums. This season I am adding 4 plumcots/apriums.(zone5)

And... 25 various blueberries.

Mike

Your plants look pretty healthy to me. The new growth tends to have that light green color so maybe that's what Bam is seeing and calling chlorotic. The lighting isn't the best either so it's kinda hard to tell. I agree with Fruitnut about the large harvest. Eating quality isn't as good as some but good enough! Nice job Clint!

Thanks blueboy1977! I can't speak for what any one is seeing or thinking. My photos are taken from an old thrasher Android 2.x from 4' to 6' away at about 6-7 AM most times, and then 640x480 sections are cropped out at fotoflexer.com and posted here. If the pictures look good enough to get folks talking about growing fruit then I'm happy. I invite others to do the same. :)

I was stunned my Springhighs are almost ready---first of the bunch. Actually some softening of the BIG berries. Not too many which is probably why they are ready and others look like fully loaded BB's.

I can see it now that you pointed it out. I'm usually looking at these forums on a cell phone too so my screen is pretty small. I had to expand the pic to see what you were talking bout Bam. The Ph is defiantly drifting but here's the kicker, if he's using sulfer which way is too extreme? When I over used sulfer in a bunch of my pots there is one thing I started see on all the plants other than chlorotic and that was pink colors in the new growth. Well, all the plants that were getting down to 3.2 Ph and lower on my Ph probe. I checked the water running out the bottom with a liquid Ph meter to make sure the reading were true. I was using rain water water and sulfer though. With high Ph tap water I would think it's drifting on the high side rather than low.

One other note on Emerald that I tried to do this season. The last two seasons when ripening the clusters of berries where so thick and compact that some berries were getting detached from surrounding berries swelling and pushing. I figure I lost 1/3 of some clusters from detachment. This season when thinning fruit buds I didn't leave any consecutive buds next to each other, rather I left every other fruit bud to give each one enough room to swell and ripen with out pushing on other clusters. So far they look nice and spaced out.

I had some more 'Emerald' this morning and they were very good. :)

blueboy1977, I don't need to know the pH. If I have trouble of any kind I can simply re-pot the plants in an hour on a Saturday, rather than futzing around daily with irrigation water trying to make perhaps an incorrect correction. The container could have a drainage problem, or whatever else. Using pH as a catch all solution for every imaginable problem for BB is not the approach I have taken. I don't want to talk anyone out of their system if they are happy with it, but nit-picking images of someone else's plants for whatever reason, seems pointless.

This weekend I'll have friends over and we will pick some fresh blueberries and pour champagne over them. Really a nice treat if you haven't tried it before. Some of you need to start having more fun. :)

Blueboy,

I do have problems sometimes with the berries getting dislodged but more so it just makes them hard to pick as they are so compressed. I solved that problem by just letting the entire column ripen then just pick them all. Picked the first 20 pounds of berries today.

Clint,

So your strategy to deal with chlorosis is every couple of weeks to knock all the soil off the plants and repot them? I bet you didn't learn that one from Dave Wilson:)

mes111, nice. You're a busy man. :)

mrclint

I LOVE IT !!!!!!!

mike

mes111, I assume you are not too far from harvestman?

mrclint

About 40 miles directly north of him (my upstate orchard zone 5) and about 40 directly south (my home zone 7).

I probably pass him every weekend as I drive north to see the "kids" ( who are waking up nicely with no discernible winter damage)

Mike