Damaged blueberries

[dtreat]

Hello All,

This is a great forum and resource, especially for “trying to grow blueberries backwards” types like me.

So, I began this endeavor completely backwards. Came across a bunch of very healthy looking, low chill varieties from Monrovia (Ca) and bought 2 each O’neal, Emerald, Sunshine Blue, and one other I can’t recall at the moment.

Next, I began researching and very quickly found myself learning about the need for acidic soil and water, with consensus being these plants will croak in soil with pH 7 being irrigated with water at 7+.

So I decided no native soil, raised bed, acidify my water, caged. I hadn’t even begun building the bed, but got that knocked out in a few days. Inside dimensions 18’X5’X16 1/2", all 2X6 pressure treated, with half inch hardware cloth across the bottom to take gophers out of the equation, plastic lined side walls to protect the lumber against moisture, and steel stakes driven to help keep the whole thing from coming apart, once that soil is in there.

During construction, several of the potted plants were drug off towards some den, left with most of the soil gone, for two days. Three of the plants were already crisp, but two were damaged but planted. I don’t know if it was squirrels or rabbits, but there were berries on the plants before they got ahold of them.

Anyways, in my pictures there are three plants together, still in pots, that I don’t know what to do with. Do they look like they could come out of it? Or not worth trying. I did replace those three and then some. The two others less damaged I planted.

I’m going to prune all dead stuff off. But about those three, that’s my main concern.

Oh, in regards to soil, a local business, San Pasqual Valley Soils (Escondido, CA) sells a blend made for Protea that grow over on the coast, made from sandy loam, pumice, mini fir bark, and Mexican coco coir, for a low pH medium. Not quite all the way, pH 6, but a much better start that my 7+native.

I purchased over cu yd of sphagnum and planted in holes made up of about 5050 Protea mix and moss.

Then I addressed the water. Also appx 7.5 out of the tap. Bought the quart of sulphuric acid at the auto parts house, and treated a gallon until I got to ph 5. Then, treated 40 gallons with 37ml in a blue plastic barrel that I have a bunch of for catching rainwater. Plants are in for a couple of weeks now, and I think they’re doing ok so far. I haven’t tested the finished soil blend yet.

And I really don’t want to water out of a barrel. Not sure what I’m gonna do and that. But for now, not too big a deal.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

[Eme]

Can’t answer your question just commenting that you built a beautiful bed!

[dtreat]

Oh why thank you!

[Nutbush-VA]

I would plant them and see. I’ve had blueberries that I threw in the compost because they were scratch test dead, (at least the bark on the side I scraped was dead and brown, didn’t scratch the whole circumference) that made a Lazarus recovery from a lower, dormant bud. Also had plants I thought weren’t damaged bad at end up dying. I’d plant and see.

That’s what I would do….but…I live in an area with acidic native soil and where I have a good deal of space to plant. I can stick something in the ground to “wait and see” without losing much in the way of opportunity cost. In your case, the planting spot probably cost you more than the plants. If planting space were a premium, I would be tempted to discard the damaged and start over. I think I’d give yours a couple weeks even at that though. Hard to tell on my screen, but almost looks like the crispy ones are already swelling new buds.

[dtreat]

You pegged my dilema perfectly. I have room on the property, but it would take a lot of work prepping native soil. I think I’ll put them in the planter, see how they do, go from there. I think I will also do weekly photos of each plant, to keep track of their growth and issues. Thank you for the reply

[Melon]

I see a lot of fertilizer burn on the plants.

I grew mine in just miracle gro soil with some soil acidifier for the first few years when i started. Sometimes i feel like people do too much for them just to over do it. From what I’ve found out, you can grow them in any medium as long as you throw in some soil acidifier.

If you have hard water like i did one time, you’ll need to use rain water somehow or bottled water. I used bottled water then. They like the soil almost always moist. On really hot days, I’ll sit them in saucers of water.

Currently I’m growing all of mine in pots until further notice. I grew them in raised beds in my berry blueberry beginnings with just miracle gro garden soil.

If it’s just the leaves that are damaged then just wait for them to fall off. Don’t prune while stressed already. Make sure you’re watering every day in anything past 75 degrees.

[dtreat]

As far as fertilizer burn goes, I have not fertilized at this point. You may be seeing the two least damaged of 5 total that got dragged off, pretty much ripped from their pots, and not found by me for two days in pretty hot weather. But I do see a little burn on a couple of others too.
Now, being that I planted in a spahgnum heavy media, I feel that I should fertilize, which I did a few days ago, sprinkling some ammonium sulfate across the entire planter, and watering it in. I didn’t calculate or measure it out, just broadcast a light amount (compared to when I used to fertilize an old peach orchard, flood irrigated and applied in the furrows pretty heavily). But there may be a need for more, and that leads to my next question:
I used ammonium sulfate because it was mentioned here, I think because it wont spike my ph. I just read about Alaska Fish emulsion fertilizer concentrate, which they claim a ph of under 4, and having “organic matter” . I have used it before when growing some smokables way back, and the plants loved it. Does anyone have any experience using fish emulsion with blueberries?

[Melon]

I guess root damage can show as fertilizer burn since fertilizer burn essentially damages the roots.

Also if you have hard water, it can show up as potential burn as well from my experience with having really hard water at my last place in Colorado.

[dtreat]

Update on my raised bed blueberries in Escondido. I continue to water with a Ryobi 18V transfer pump from a food grade 55 gallon blue plastic drum with tap water acidified with battery acid to about 5 ph.

The plants have grown well this summer, and being that November in Escondido runs 80s daytime and 50s nighttime, other things besides the plants themselves seem to be thriving.

The larger leaf varieties seem to be affected most with this leaf damaging condition. It’s been present from the beginning, and seems to have worsened slightly over the summer. When the leaf is infected enough, it will fall off easily by just touching it. We don’t have much wind here, so the infected leaves do hang on, although today I found quite a few (a dozen) on the ground under one plant.

I have scoured the Internet for pest and disease identification for blueberries grown in California, and really have only found info about bacterial leaf scorch and shock virus. But not any photos.

Can anyone tell from my pictures, what may be infecting these plants?

Here’s a photo from when I first planted, and now.

I think they’ve grown well.