I wouldn't bother with blueberries, too much trouble having to acidify soil

If you've planted them in a pot, you might have some luck by using an acidifying fertilizer. Our native soil here is just not conducive to growing blueberries. Good luck with yours though, let us know how it goes!

Kevin

My Biloxi is doing fine here. But as was said here you can ONLY grow blueberries in containers full of high organic rich acid soil. Must maintain moisture with heavy mulch and give them some overhead and western shade in the summer.

Biloxi is a year round evergreen developed by the USDA. The bad news; it takes 3 years before fruit production begins. 1 gal pots are likely 1 year old plants. Better to pay extra for 3 yr old plants and start getting fruit in May rather than waiting 2-3 years.

This post was edited by Fascist_Nation on Mon, Mar 3, 14 at 15:40

They are about 1.5 to 2ft tall and flowering and fruiting right now, that is what surprised me when I saw them. I do have everything in containers with the proper mix of peat potting mix and pine bark with perlite and soil sulfur, I attempted last year but did most everything wrong but one plant survived that shouldn't even do well here and that is a legacy which is now flowering.

I bought these blueberries about a month ago too. I got pink lemonade, Biloxi and Sunshine Blue. I have a bunch of blueberries growing on the Biloxi. The sunshine blue and pink lemonade have some growing too, but not as many as the Biloxi. As far as new foliage, the pink lemonade looks to have the most new growth.

I put all 3 into huge containers with mostly peat moss (perlite, vermiculite and some potting soil mixed in). I water them with acidic water (around 5.5-6 ph), and on the weekends, I add a little ammonium sulfate to the water.

I'm looking forward to seeing how they do in our summer :)

This post was edited by iAndy on Thu, Apr 3, 14 at 18:50

They need overhead AND western shade in Phoenix summers (past the fruiting season). Lost my first round to afternoon sun. I keep mine on the east side canopy of a shade tree so they will be in shade from about 10:30-11AM onward in summer. The also need a heavy organic mulch layer to protect the roots from drying. Right now they are very happy. If I can say this again at this same time next year I will be very happy.

Thanks for the tip. I'll do that and cover the sides of the containers with white plastic. I've previously found that the white plastic thing was all I had to do to allow some plants to live through the summer, although my Brugmansia still gets beat up if it gets even a little sun after 11 am from June on.

How do they look now?

The ones I bought that year all died because for some reason I thought we were supposed to let them *dry* out before watering again. They did make it all the way into June with that train of thought but that was because they were so big already. Also midday shade is important and it kind of nullifies the need to put coverings over the containers.

I have 3 new plants this year that have been doing fine because of the drip system (you can see 2 of them in the August pictures thread).