Hi, this is Ed Laivo of Dave Wilson Nursery. I’m going to show you a little bit about container icing a blueberry here. What we start with is the basic products for putting this container together. We’re going to use some peat moss here, an acid potting soil if you can find it, acid base primarily used for soils. And then some medium sized bark. This is a little bit bigger than what I’d like but this will work fine and then a few organic fertilizers.
We’re going to use in this case a cotton seed meal, a feather meal and a fish meal and always good to have some soil sulfur around for your plants as you’re growing them. We’ll use these organic fertilizers to get our pH down initially. Soil sulfur is great to use for maintaining that pH low in the container through the years.
So now we have our based materials laid out in three different segments each one of one third bark, potting soil, and peat moss. We’re going to mix all this together thoroughly. So, we’re going to use a half a cup of the fish meal. We’re going to use 2 tablespoons of the feather meal, 4 tablespoons of the cotton seed meal and we’ll just pour it in and mix it in well.
Last but not the least, put in just about a handful of soil sulfur that will help to maintain the pH over the long run. Alright, now we have our potting soil or our medium mix up. We have our feed and we also have our pH stabilizer. This is ready to plant.
Make sure your pot has plenty of holes for drainage in the bottom of the can. Alright, now we’re going to plant one of my favorite varieties of blueberries, the Southern High bush called Reveille. This one is just breaking beautiful blooms. This is what’s going to go in this pot here. Center it, pack it down good on its side, get that so it makes pack in there really good to get all the air space. Alright, that’s planted nicely.
Lastly, we bring the back it in again. You can compost if you want. Got our plant watered in. Now, we’re going to take GPH meter, stick it in there. We’re not looking for anything fancy, just to make sure we’re in that range and look at that gauge fall right there going into the 5-5 range right there. We’ve got our acid fertilizers in here. We’ve got our sulfer in there within the next 2 or 3 months that will help to bring it down even more. We’re right about where we want to be.
Step 1: Soil mix for healthy, vigorous plants mix the following: 1/3 part, ¼ pathway bark or wood chip mulch, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 part forest by-product based potting soil such as Azalea mix or acid plant mix, I handful soil sulfur, an organic fertilizer mix of cotton seed meal, fish meal, and feather meal.
Step 2: Plant. Choose a container size to suit your plant. Start all 4 inch to 1 gallon size plants in 2 to 5 gallon containers. For established 2 to 5 gallon plants, choose a 16 to 20 inch container. Fill the bottom of your container with the soil mix and pack down. Place the blueberry and continue to fill and pack down around the root ball with the soil mix. Top off with large bark to help filter salts from the irrigation water.
Step 3: Water and fertilize. Don’t let the container dry out. Never use fertilizer with nitrogen in nitrate form. It can kill. Blueberries love full sun. Fertilize with acid based fertilizer once a month during the growing season.
