Recipe for blueberry soil in containers? Peat, sulfer, phos

General Fruit Growing
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Hi, I have a few 45 gallon pots to put blueberries in. So far I’ve got peat, pearlite and 2 1/2 shovel fulls of horse manure & about 1 1/2 cups of kelp in each. Probably about a 1/2 cup of pure slow release rock phosphate I had left over.

I have on hand some cal-phos, azomite, sulfer and chicken manure I’d like to add, but can’t guess the amounts and how they’d balance each other with the ph.

I’m having a hard time finding a recipe that keeps the ph in range. I don’t have the means to measure the soil ph right now… Just want to be close enough and somewhere around in range. Anyone have any recipes pr gallon cup etc?

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The soil requirements depend on: cultivar, water supply, and geographic location – in that order.

What are you growing, how will they receive water, and where are you located?

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One is “legacy”, the other 2 I’ve lost the tags for. They were an impulse buy last year. If they don’t taste good enough they’ll be replaced. I grew up with wild Maine blueberries… not sure anything is going to taste as good…

Spring water, haven’t tested yet but can correct some ph in a barrel later when I do. Suspect very slightly high/alkaline with possibly a bit too much boron. Lots of iron. Probably high manganese - common here.

Northern California coastal mountains 2400 ft elevation. Zone 8b. Yearly extreme days/nights usually 23-27 lows for 3-4 hours and 110 to 113F summer extreme highs.
EDIT; water is from a spring. Not chlorinated.

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Given that you are irrigating, the water (not the soil amendments) will dictate the pH.

Of course, the soil needs to be suitable for blueberries and their symbiotic mycorrhizae which is already present in your local soil.

New plants will take about 4 years to come into regular production.

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We mix in a bit of weather pine needles. You get the local biotics plus it helps keep the ph around 5 for us.

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Thanks Richard.

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Thanks Danny. We don’t have hardly any pine trees here, mostly doug fir and redwood. Redwood has some natural chemicals that I’m not sure if blueberries will tolerate ?? I guess I’ll do a search. I do have some bags of wood shavings from some planted bishop pines that were cut down. The needles are mostly gone though.

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Mine are growing well in a mixture of sand, cured (and dried) compost, and 1/4" orchid bark (purchased in 3 cu.ft. bags).

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Horse manure may not be a desirable ingredient,as the pH is between 8 and 12.Chicken is a little lower,6.5 to 8,but still too high.

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Thanks BBB. Good to know the PH. I do have sulfer.

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Thanks. What type of blueberries Richard?

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I’m growing the Monrovia hybrid “Sunshine Blue” plus the Northern Carolina State University cultivar “O’Neal”. I keep the pH down by fertigating with N-pHuric.

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Thanks Richard

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I’ve always read you should never mix in manure or compost into container blueberry soil.
All the youtube video recipes I’ve seen are mostly either pure peat moss, or peat moss mixed with perlite or pumice. This is what I stick to (some of mine are pure peat moss, some are 50/50 peat/perlite or peat/pumice and they all look happy to me)

Then I cover with finely shredded pine bark mulch
Then I sprinkle both espoma soil acidifier and espoma holly tone on them about once a month
so far so good for me, about 20 varieties in containers in Texas

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This is what I use. If you don’t have access to pine bark, you can use any other locally available bark that is similarly acidic.

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The huge blueberry farms here use very weathered chicken manure on their very fine looking bushes.

We use weathered manures as well. As a topical.

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Thank you Chip, I’ve seen that but then they invariably use packaged fertilizer a few times a year. I’d rather not.

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Here’s a conversation you may find interesting:

I potted up a Top Hat blueberry about a month ago and just used some 100% organic peat that I had on hand. I mixed some Plant Magic into it to fertilize, again because I had it on hand. We’ll see how it does.

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Thank you Daniel! I’ve never used sulfur before so this is great info.I can sort of guess the amount to use from that. Then adjust it later when it settles and I can find my ph meter. Most of the info I’ve seen on sulfer is per acre or SQ ft which doesn’t translate well to containers.

I noticed some people use large grained pearlite instead of bark. I get too many book lice with wood products, and when the population explodes they eat fine roots. So will add a lesser amount if any and a little bit more sulfer. I can’t use blood meal either- it attracts the bears. We have problem bears in the neighborhood.

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Thank you FarmGirl! Very helpful.

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