Mixture For Acid Soil

[Nyboy]

I am going to be planting some blueberries in a raised bed. I will be filling bed with soil brought in, what should I be mixing in with soil ?

 

[thistlebloom]

The recipe I used for my blueberry barrels was 3 parts soil (I used a potting mix)
1 part perlite and 1 part coarse bark. I added a soil acidifying fertilizer made by Espoma. This is year two and 3 of the 6 are doing great. The other 3 died of poor drainage because I should have enlarged the drain holes on the barrels before winter. Dang.

Blueberries have a shallow netted root system so a good bark mulch is good for moisture retention. You can mulch with anything that will keep the soil moist, but when you read about using pine needles or oak leaves as mulch to acidify the soil don't believe it. It ain't happening.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I used sulfur.

 

[Smart Red]

Garden sulfur is good, but Aluminum Sulfate -- often recommended -- can build up in the soil to toxic levels in time. We dug out all of the soil where we wanted the acid loving plants and added lots of ground oak leaves, coffee grounds, peat moss, ground pine needles, aluminum sulfate (recommended back in 1980's), to the soil we'd removed and mulched with pine needles because we had a great source for them and they provide a thick mulch for several years.

I still occasionally add garden sulfur, Miracle Grow acid fertilizer, coffee grounds, and left over coffee and mulch with ground oak leaves. We've had better than 30 years of delicious in ground blueberries to pick in an area where they aren't supposed to grow.

 

[thistlebloom]

I related this somewhere else here when we had a blueberry conversation, but to keep it brief, one of the Master gardener instructors is a blueberry farmer and grows his 7 acres of BB on unamended soil with a pH close to 7. (In the high 6s anyway.)
His berries produce really well, and he sells at the farmers Market and supplies a couple of local grocery stores. He summed it up by saying the pH is obviously not critical, but the soil texture ( light and humusy) and moisture level is.

Just to put pH in perspective blueberries are recommended to be grown at 4.5 to 5.5, depending on who you read. So the high sixes is a huge jump away from "ideal".

 

[MoonShadows]

I recently read that blueberries love coffee grounds.

 

[Smart Red]

Growing the blueberries in pots should be a lot easier as long as you keep the containers from drying out. As Thistle says, blueberries have shallow roots and live for moist soil conditions. If you have lime in your water supply like I do, a tbsp. of cheap vinegar in each gallon or so of water every few waterings will be an easy help. As long as God is doing the watering, I skip the vinegar.

 

[ducks4you]

Horse manure. VERY acidic and non toxic.

 

[thistlebloom]

The recipe I used for my blueberry barrels was 3 parts soil (I used a potting mix)
1 part perlite and 1 part coarse bark. I added a soil acidifying fertilizer made by Espoma. This is year two and 3 of the 6 are doing great. The other 3 died of poor drainage because I should have enlarged the drain holes on the barrels before winter. Dang.

Blueberries have a shallow netted root system so a good bark mulch is good for moisture retention. You can mulch with anything that will keep the soil moist, but when you read about using pine needles or oak leaves as mulch to acidify the soil don't believe it. It ain't happening.

I forgot to say that I also added about 2 parts peat.

 

[Nyboy]

Thistle good to know not to get so hung up on ph, I take a farmers advice any day.