Thursday, April 30, 2009

Putting in my First Blueberry Plants

On Tuesday the temperature reached 93 degrees, a new record in our area for April 28th. By Wednesday evening a frost warning circulated! Ah, New England. This morning it is 40 degrees, no frost, but I had brought my little tomato plants back in the house just in case.
A few days ago four blueberry (not wild blues) plants arrived. Yesterday, after digging the first hole, I poured water into it just to check the drainage. That hole held water like a pail! Nice. So today I'll be digging a trench rather than four separate holes for the blueberry plants. That way I can fill the trench with organic material and better soil. Good luck to me.

The nursery that sent the blueberry plants included a booklet of how-to instructions. Listed below are their -

RULES FOR CONTAINER GROWING
1. Containers may be plastic, wood, metal, or clay. Your container must provide drainage. You cannot have water sitting in the bottom so the root system lies in a pool of water all the time. To provide drainage, drill or punch holes in the container, then put a couple of inches of broken crockery, gravel, marble chips or comparable material in the bottom.
2. Use a container big enough not to crowd roots. Trees require containers about 24 inches across, whether round, square, or rectangular, and as deep as your knee. For grapes and berries, use a container to one-half the tree size. A good mixture of soil for container growing is 1/3 sand, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 loose planting soil.
3. Feed your plant(s) with a liquid fertilizer once a month. Water them during growing seasons frequently enough to keep the soil slightly damp, not moist, to the touch.

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