Your plants look very healthy, good job! Blueberries can dry out easier than some other plants since their roots are quite shallow, so be sure to be on top of the watering (and not overwatering).

Scott

Ditto what Scottfsmith said, you got some really nice looking plants there, Way to go!

Those blueberry shrubs look healthy, so you must be doing something right. I grow blueberries, in the ground, here in Madison, Wisconsin. We have hard water, which I use for watering our blueberries during the summer drought. This raises the soil pH, and the shrubs typically let me know they are not happy, the following spring, when they leaf out, and the leaves are yellow-green, or sometimes red-brown. I add white vinegar to our tap water, to lower pH, but the vinegar is broken down by soil bacteria, so the benefit is temporary. I also have agricultural sulfur in the soil, and that is supposed to lower the pH over time, but it takes a year to fully dissolve. If you water your blueberry shrubs with rainwater, you will likely not have these issues. If you have hard water, with dissolved calcium and magnesium, then you can expect to eventually have some issues with soil pH.

Thanks for the advice. I will have to keep on it when the summer gets the temp up over 100* in the next month or two. I have very hard water here but I have a whole house water softener. The line that I am watering out of is hooked up to it. I guess I should test it and see what it's like after the softener.

Water softeners use an ion-exchange method to remove calcium and magnesium from hard water. It is the "exchange" part of the mechanism that causes problems for plants, and people, who might consume the softened water. The water softener exchanges calcium and magnesium for sodium, and sodium is not good for your blueberries, or any plants in the yard, for that matter. If your system has a reverse osmosis device to remove the sodium, then you can drink the water without taking in too much salt, and raising your blood pressure over time. Water used on plants should also be run through an "RO" device to remove the sodium. If you don't have an RO type system, it would be cheaper to collect rainwater for the blueberry shrubs.

Eric said it so much better than I ever could, yep, the salt would not be good for your beautiful little babies.

All great info! Beautiful pictures. I like your garden and your view!

I keep coffee grounds on top of mine just to help with the acid they love. The boys at Orchard Valley Supply (where we got our grapevine trellis wire) told me that blueberries need the same water as grapevines, so ours our getting equal drips and doing great!!

I'd love to see if I can propagate blueberries from cuttings. Need to learn a little more before doing that. The birds worry me also, and I'll need bird netting for the vineyard, and my potted blueberries will get netted at the same time!

We have O'Neil, Sharpblue, and Sunshine Blue. I just walked out there so I could post our varieties here and I found one blueberry!! OMG! Not sure when it will be ripe, but we will have to cut it in half so we can both try it! LOL!! It's a lovely shade of blue!

Suzi

I am in Socal too and I have Misty, southmoon, and O'Neil. Southmoon is very rigorous and is a very good producer. The berries are also largest of all. Highly recommended.

O'Neil, is also rigorous, but not nearly as rigorous as southmoon. does not taste as good as southmoon, but reasonably good.

Misty: they do very poorly for me. I have two that are receiving same care as other ones (all potted) but are both dying. They seem to be very picky about the soil and water. The berries are small but do taste good.

I plan to get rid of the Misties and replace them with Southmoon. You can't go wrong with them in Socal.

All this info is good to know. I will have to keep an eye on the soil conditions and dig out my diopter to test my PH to see how the water is that isn't gowing thru the softner.

My wife and I were looking at the blueberries this evening and I noticed they have all grown much more since I took those pictures last week. I know they were recently planted and the only one to have berries so far is the Oneil. It has three so far (I guess we can split one ) and many more flowers are starting to bloom. I wasn't really expecting any until next season.

I started the garden this year with only a small 10' x 3' corner of the yard but it did so well I expanded it and built the picket fence to keep the dogs out. I am still more worried about our little cocker eating the berries than the birds since she likes them so much.

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I also planted an orange, lemon, cherrie and apricot tree this year.

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I like posting a lot of pictures, I hope you don't mind.

Here is a link that might be useful: My garden

We had a labrador retriever who liked to eat blueberries off the shrub, and also red raspberries. Since we fed her cooked broccoli now and then, she also developed a taste for raw broccoli, growing in the garden. She lived to be 15 years, 5 months, so I guess none of these bothered her.

Home Grower, as hard as it is to do, I would suggest taking off the flowers this year and let that energy go toward growth. The one that already has three berries on it I would leave, as that few berries won't slow the plant growth very much. You could leave just a very few flowers on the other plants just for a taste test, just remember that the more fruit the plant produces the less energy there is for plant growth and getting the most growth the first year can make a big difference on the amount of fruit you get every year there after, IMHO.

mudflapper I know you are giving me great advice. It is very hard to kill off the future berries but I do agrre I need to remove at least half of them. the Oneils is the only one sprouting flowers so far. While giving me fruit so soon it is also growing fast as well as the other two. I did my best to get both pictures in as close to as I can the same angle to show the growth so far. To me if it has grown this much in three weeks I can look forward to a nice future of many berries.

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These must have been potted plants with a very healthy root system, huh! I must say you got some very nice looking plants, wow! great growth so soon means you must have done everything right, yep 1/2 flower removal should be fine... If by some small chance these were bare root, which I doubt; I would still remove the flowers.

Hi there. I have 6 blueberry bushes growing in Kenya. (4 Sunshine blues and 2 Misty)
2 of them seem to be doing fine and one bush has a pretty pink flower.

http://s709.photobucket.com/albums/w...y%20Blueberry/

The other 4 seem to be suffering and I can't tell whether its a nutritional deficiency, a virus, a fungus, a pest problem or too much water. I have checked the ph and it is normally between 4.5 and 5. All four plants have flower buds that have not opened up yet and I don't think they will. The plants are in a pot with an african violet potting soil mixed with coir. I have added sulphur powder, ammonium sulphate and cotton seed meal to keep the ph at optimum level. About two weeks ago I noticed some of the leaves turning purple at the edges on one bush. On the other one the new leaves are light green.I have posted some pictures:

http://s709.photobucket.com/albums/ww95/tnat/

One of the healthier plants that are in a different location also has some leaves that are purplish around the edge. I would really appreciate some help in identifying the problem with my bushes.

Thanks and Cheers!

BBM

Here is a link that might be useful: Blueberry Pics