I have used sulfuric acid to bring my city water down to ph5 for my 9 blueberries this year. They were planted in Feb/March. 3 potted plants and 6 raised beds 12in high. I did add some sulfer to the mix at planting. I had to use the city water all year untill July when we had our first rain drop. They have had nothing but rain water since with a ph of 6.5 to 6.8. I checked my potted blues ph last weekend by watering with deionized water and collecting water draining out the bottom of the pot. My readings were 5.2, 5.5 and 6. The ph6 plant has some red showing on the leaves and hasnt really grown much at all the last month. Could this be from overwatering? We have had temps in the 100s for 40+ days up untill this past weekend its been in the low 90s. I was watering everyday about 1 1/2 gallons rain water in 15 gallon pots. Is this too much? Thinking I may have flushed out the out the acidity? Now my raised beds are still very low on the ph. One in particular pegs my ph meter out at ph1. I think all that sulfric has settled down in the bottom of my raised bed and created a hostile evironment. Havent noticed any ill effects on that plant though? Im thinking the roots my not have reached that far down into the raised bed yet. I have clay soil under the raised beds so they dont drain quite as good as I would like. So my experince with the sulfuric acid has been positive with my potted plants but not so good with my raised beds.

For me blueberries in pots are the most difficult plant I grow. Things regularly run off the tracks, especially with new plants. Every time I plant the media is somewhat different. I'm regularly forced back and forth from rainwater to well water. It all adds up to constant adjustments, not easy!!

I've gotten one rain in the past year that filled my rain barrels and one that partially filled them. It only takes 0.4 inches to fill the barrels. Unless I come up with $2,400 for a 3,000 gallon system I'm looking at well water usage.

I'll likely be stuck with using treated well water most of the winter again this year. I'm going to rely on the UF link above for my course of action. I'll add sulfuric acid to well water until pH stabilizes between 4 and 4.5.

Fruitnut,

What medium do you plant the potted BB in?

I took this picture before bud break in one of the local BB fields. This field was probably 5 acres of nothing but pots. Those are 8 year old bushes in half water barrels. The BB had been in pots their entire lives and the grower was selling them for $10 each, there was 4-5 different varieties for sale and he was selling probably 1000 or so pots total....as they were switching to an earlier ripening cultivar.

{{gwi:83676}}

I really am ignorant on the subject of pot grown BB or any fruit for that matter, as I have always grown everything in the ground. They water them with high ph well water and they are planted in nothing but pine bark...be it in the pots or in hilled up rows. I guess I am asking why you feel it is so difficult to grow them in pots? I must be missing something.

Cool picture bamboo. Are they are growing those plants commercially in pots? Weird but I must admit the plants look healthy. Are they treating the high pH water before using it on the plants? Are they finding it necessary to adjust the pH over time?

My plants in pots are thriving but I'm using a mix of mostly peak and fir bark....similar concept.

RM

I don't think they'd grow them in pots with our water unless it were treated with sulfuric acid or similar. Here's a Star plant that I rescued today from a local nursery. It was getting some rainwater and some well water this summer. Next to it on the left is an otherwise identical planting that I was taking care of this summer. Both are Star planted and cut back to 12 inches in April.

Mine had some issues with black vine weevil but are merely cosmetic leaf damage.

{{gwi:123463}}

Riverman,

Yes they are a commercial operation. The plants were very healthy, you can just see the blooms starting to open on some of the plants. The plants were about 5 feet tall I suppose and the base of the plants were baseball size. They do not treat the water at all. They do add Tiger 90 pelleted sulfur to the pots and they use a fertilizer that was specifically formulated for blueberries where all the sources are acid forming and contains all the micro nutrients BB need. There is another grower a couple miles from my house that has some of the largest BB bushes I have ever seen and they are high bush not rabbiteye. She said the migrant pickers sometimes have trouble picking from them. The bushes have leaves that are simply massive, 5"+ and the grower credits the fertilizer for the size of the plants. I use the same fert they do but I am still waiting for my plants to look like hers:)

Fruitnut the well water here comes from limerock....the PH is very high.

bamboo:

I've tried getting my two best buddies started in potted blueberries. Both have killed most of their plants and neither has harvested more than a handful of shriveled berries. Maybe I'm just a bad teacher.

My mix is about 50:50 spaghnum peat moss and partially composted wood shavings from a rat growing operation. The pH varies so I often play catchup with sulfur and copperas. Using straight peat would be easier I guess but it's expensive.

The commercial growers you talk about have the advantage of lots of acidic rain, at least at times. I don't know what else to say other than I haven't met anyone here who thinks blueberries are easy.

Thanks Bamboo.......can you say what fertilizer are they using?

Fruitnut,

Have you tried using the pine bark fines? I use a combination of peat and the fines along with the soil where they are growing which is rotted tree company trimmings.

I don't think our rain is acidic?

Riverman,

Here is a pic of it....I know it is a lousy pic. If you can't read it I can take a better pic tomorrow. Helena chemical makes it and they are a national company with outlets in most states. I'm not sure if you can get the BB blend all over though. It is also very cheap at $12 per 50 pounds.

{{gwi:123462}}

Thanks Bamboo.........I'm sorry I didn't notice you had already posted the fert information further up in the thread.

RM

Hi bamboo rabbit,
Does that fertilizer have a name?I checked on Helena Chemical's website and they have a lot of products,most of them they stick a name to.
There are two locations in Washington,Moses Lake and Pasco,kind of far for me,about 150 miles,but a good excuse to try some of the great fishing there.Thanks,Brady

Brady,

Locally they call it Blueberry special but it does not have a name on the bag. Helena is geared more toward farmers and golf courses.

bamboo rabbit,
I contacted the Helena Chemical business in Moses Lake,Wa and they are wholesale only and even so,they don't have mixes for blueberries.The manager said to contact another Helena office in the eastern US,because a lot of them are retail.
I was wondering where yours is purchased?At $12 for 50 lbs,maybe they could ship me some and it might be still cost effective,even with shipping,Thanks,Brady

Brady,

Like I said Helena is geared more toward farmers and golf courses. The price is $12 a bag or was this spring when I bought mine, pelleted sulfur was $10 per 50 pounds.

Florida lawn care (Helena)
11500 Old Lakeland Road
Dade City, FL 33525
Phone: 352.567.5622

Good luck, let us know what they say.

How about lawnmower chopped oak leaves for mulch around blueberries? It seems like those would be fairly acidic, no?

Brady,

I contacted the folks in Pasco and they told me all they have is 20-20-20 with micros and have never seen the blueberry mix.

Riverman,

Odd. At my Helena in Dade city I get 10-10-10, 16-4-8 which is a mature citrus mix....a different mix (can't recall what it is) for the young citrus as well as 21-5-6 for my bamboo as well as the BB fert which is 12-4-8.

For some reason we have more trouble in the west getting blueberry fertilizers. This isn't the first time I have tried to find a fertilizer only to discover it's not offered in this region. We have commercial blueberry farms here though so you would think they would also have fertilizers. Around my home town we grow mostly grapes for wineries but also wheat. Thousands of acres of apples, cherries, onions, and various other crops.

Thanks for trying to help bamboo.

RM

Riverman,

When you say Pasco you meant? I assumed you meant Pasco county which is a county here in Florida. Now I know you must have meant a different Pasco.

Yea, Pasco Washington. The Helena Chemical Company has two outlets in Washington, one being in Pasco which is just 40 miles from me.

Thanks bamboo rabbit and riverman,but it looks like the shipping costs will kill the deal.I checked online with UPS and USPS and it costs over $100 to ship 50 lbs,but thanks again anyway.I'll have to check with some local blueberry farms to see where they get theirs.
Pasco is in the southeastern part of Washington State by the Columbia River and is also known as one of the Tri Cities along with Richland and Kennewick.Brady

BStruss,

The oak leaves are great for the soil and if you live in an area with naturally acidic soil it would work. If you have neutral soil or above the leaves are not nearly enough to acidify the soil. The leaves in combo with pine bark fines would work great, that is what we used in PA.

Bamboo: it took me a while but finally it is obvious you are talking about hydroponic container culture. Growing in your sugar soil would be essentially the same in that you'd need to be supplying all the macro and micro nutrients and adjusting the irrigation water, depending on it's quality.

Previously, I thought you were talking about growing berries in the soil because that is how it is done in north central FL where I spent 7 years doing horticulture research on other crops.

My hat goes off to anyone who can come up with a productive, reliable, profitable system to grow container, hydroponic blueberries. Hydroponics is both technically and time demanding for any crop, indoors or out.

For others interested in irrigation water acidification: there are other options including, but not limited to phosphoric acid (commonly used in greenhouses). Having spent many years handling concentrated acids and bases, I strongly urge anyone interested in using them who is not trained to so to not even consider using them.

Options for soil applied fertilizers include dry forms like sulfur, urea, sulfur coated urea and ammonium sulfate which react in the soil to lower soil pH and as well as ammonium thiosulfate (ATS). ATS is a liquid that is commonly used in row crops where it is banded next to seed rows at or near planting where it lowers soil ph and aids in P availability, particularly in cold soils.

Does anyone have a handle on how much sulfur to add to a gallon pot to lower the ph by a point? The guidlines I've seen are for 100 square feet of bed, not pots.

Thanks,
Marc

Marc5,

I think that you need to tell us what you are using in the pot as a soil medium. At a give starting PH, soil mediums that are more dense will require more sulfur. A one gallon pot isn't much volume. I'd guess that it will be close to around 1 teaspoon for just 1 Ph point. You realize that it will take several months for the sulfur to breakdown and actually lower the Ph don't you?

Hi there, I am just the new here and I do like to get guideline in home gardening and plants to grow in my back yard.It is fantastic way to learn at this forum and blue berries are mine favourite fruits

Northernmn, my medium is Pro-Mix BX, soiless, 18 months old, and with plenty of hard water watering. I checked ph with a kit and it's a bit over 7.0. My plants are pawpaws, not blueberries (sorry to be tagging along on this thread, but it's a great one, and also appropriate for pawpaws). They are showing signs of problems from high ph. Other trees potted in soil with same fertigation regimen look very good. Most may be planted out during next year, but I wanted to get a start on lowering the ph now.

Thank you for your ideas,
Marc

If you want to lower it right away marc try using some whit vinegar. I have found a a tablespoon in a gallon of water will lower my pH 7 water to about 5. Try watering the plant with this mix every other watering or every third watering and that should do the trick.

RM

Marc,

With your water Ph @ 7, you will probably need to do a combination of adding sulfur to your Pro Mix BX and the white vinegar program that riverman is suggesting. There are several current posts on this forum that discuss the Ph flushing effect of water @ Ph7 or higher. The more unaltered water you pour through the pot, the more the Ph will tend to rise.

I'd put 1 to 1.5 teaspoon of sulfur into you mix. Stay with a vinegar program for a couple of months, then start checking the Ph to see if the sulfur is kicking in. If you start to trend too low on the Ph, stop the vinegar program and just flush with your Ph 7 water if it gets too low. Unfortunately Marc, there are no exact amounts for this. The amount of Ph 7 water that you use will vary so your controls will have to vary as well. It's hard to get away from Ph checking on growing mediums that need altering. Small containers are especially tricky to control.

I thank you all and my plants thank you. Great posts, great thread. I will follow accordingly.

Marc

One other thing Marc. I have plants in pots that are just finishing their 3rd year. They are in a mix of mostly peat but also fir bark. This summer I applied two or three applications of ammonium sulf at one ounce per plant. I didn't dissolve it, I just sprinkled it on the surface and mixed it in. Other than that, I have done nothing to help maintain pH and I am dumping gallons and gallons of water on these plants and they are showing no signs whatsoever of having pH issues. My water has a pH of about 7. It's my feeling that once blues get an established root system that pH is not as critical. Of course if you can hold them at a pH of about 5 then great but I know for sure they will grow very well in the pH 6 range.

I should add that I do apply a half cup or so of sulfur in the spring and in the fall as a precautionary meausure.

RM

RM:

A half cup twice a year on a potted bb is a lot even in a big pot. Not saying that's wrong because it's working. Just saying that should correct a lot of pH 7 water issues.

I hope so Fruitnut, they are in winebarrels so the pots are huge. I will add though, there has been times when I didn't apply sulfur the entire year and other years I applied it twice.

One other thing I did last fall was add about two gallons of apples to each pot. The apples fell off my tree so I gathered them up, chopped them into smaller pieces in the wheelbarrow with a shovel and then put them around each plant.

I got this idea from an area nursery that swears this is the trick to healthy plants. The apples do two things, one is they drop the pH by adding organic matter and the second is they provide additional nutrients. I did the same thing for my raspberries last fall and I'm having a huge crop this year, bigger than ever. I will be doing the same this fall.

RM

Riverman,

The commercial guys here add a good handful of sulfur to the pots twice a year, 25 gallon pots so your amount seems ok. While we do not have many apples here in sunny Florida people do place bad citrus fruit around the plants for the same reasons you mentioned for the apples.

This link help with blueberries.

Here is a link that might be useful: Blues

I recently caught some salmon and put some of their guts about 3/4 down into the pots of the Sweetcrisps while planting them,along with some sulfur.Brady

I'm not sure the apples would help in all areas. Where I'm at the winters are long so if I put the apples down in late October they have until April before the plants come out of dormancy. This gives them a long time to turn into nutrients while the plants are dormant. Last winter I could still see pieces of the apples clear up until maybe February. My guess is that if you live in a warmer climate the apples would break down faster. The bummer this year is that my apple tree doesn't have a single apple becuase of an early frost last fall so I'm going to have to see if I can find some. I do have tons of pears this year though so some of those will be going around the plants.

RM

Riverman,
Have you noticed any difference one way or another in rodent or deer damage on your bushes. I have always heard one should not compost fallen apples if they have any pests in them. Are yours sprayed apples that just fell early?
Northwoodswis

No I haven't noticed any difference. There are deer all around my house but they never come into the yard because of my dog. I have the occassional gopher but I generally trap them.

Last year I got my apples from a single tree growing on my place. The tree is loaded with small apples and most fall to the ground so I just collect them and then add them to the bushes. The apples have not been sprayed with anything.

This year my apple tree doesn't have a single apple so I will probably collect some from a wild tree not far from here. We have lots of wild apples growing in the foothills around here so finding apples is not difficult.

RM

For anybody thinking about burying things like fish cleaning waste for fertilizer..... 1st check your racoon and other animal population. If I did that here in northern MN, all of my blueberry plants would be dug up overnight. I'll do that in my garden when harvest is over. They dig it up enough that I barely have to use the rototiller ! ! !

northernmn,
Like I stated,it was about 3/4 down in the pot and even up close there is no odor,not even flies.Brady

I use the foliage and soil treatments suggested by Backyard Berry Plants with fish fertilizer and that has a very fishy smell and it attracts flies but so far no raccoons.Brady

Keep in mind that a plant can experience both nutrient excess and deficiency conditions and have them not visually expressed. If one has enough plant material available, plant tissue sampling can be a very useful aid in determining how well your plants are responding to your efforts. There are other important benefits but I'm too tired to elaborate.

http://www.iclfertilizers.com/Fertilizers/Knowledge%20Center/NOVAcid%20NPK%20english.pdf

i'm looking into this novacid.seems 1% in your water will bring it down to 3-4 ph.with nutrients.it made for drip systems to insure against clogging the drippers.

why not just use a ph down such as made for hydroponic use? it is food grade phosphoric acid, commonly found in can soda most people drink.. 15 drops of it in a gallon of water decreases my ph from 7.8 to 4.8. i have very clean tap water, about 40ppm (almost as pure as rainwater) so it takes very little to lower the ph. i bought an 8 oz bottle a few years ago. must of made hundreds of gallons and still have half a bottle left.

they also sell it in gallon sizes which should be good for a million gallons ;)
http://amzn.to/1SrX4nA

pH Down looks great but does it have a short effect like vinegar or does it have longer lasting effects like sulfuric acid?

i've used it for hydroponic growing and it's stable at whatever i adjust the water to. for example, i adjusted a 5 gal container of water down to ph 6 and a month later it was still 6.. the ph down says it "promotes ph stability"

also, as i mentioned its use (phosphoric acid) in can soda, i know that coca cola has a certain ph, even after a year or more of the soda inside the can, the ph remains the same. (i know this because i have used can soda to calibrate my digital ph meter) and if you didn't know, Mountain Dew has a ph of 3.8-4.0!! which is why i don't drink it (or soda for that matter) the acid rots your teeth/enamel..

Not sure it anyone will answer this seeing how old this thread is, but I am a farmer and getting out of the produce side of farming . . . I am wanting to establish and begin growing blueberries. I have a high fence plot with a drip system already established. I live in Springtown, Texas, which is in Zone 8 . . . north Texas. I am on city water. My parents had a blueberry farm in East Texas for about 10 years and it had been established for about 30 when they had purchased it. He doesn't feel blueberry bushes will survive on city water and that the chlorine will surely kill them. I am going to get a soil test in the next few days; but, I am wondering if this is even possible? Can this work?