How to Grow Blueberries

Growing your own blueberry bush is fairly easy, especially since many varieties are native to the United States. With proper pruning and care, your blueberry bush can flourish and provide baskets full of beautiful sweet fruit for pies, jams and snacking. Here's how to grow your own blueberry bushes.

Instructions

1. Contact your state agricultural experiment station for a blueberry variety recommendation. Bluecrop, for instance, is a mid-season bloomer which produces large, light blue berries and is quite hardy and drought resistant. This might be great in a dryer area.

2. Select a location. Blueberry bushes need acid soil with a high moisture retention. Be sure to check that the pH value is between 5 and 6. These bushes can thrive in partial shade, but do best in a sunny location.

3. Plant your blueberry bush in the fall or the spring when the soil is workable. Space them about 4 feet apart and 1 inch deeper in the soil than they were in the nursery. Plant 4 to 6 bushes for an averaged-sized family to enjoy fruit all season with some left over for canning and freezing.

4. Fertilize the blueberry bush in the late winter or early spring, about 1 month before growth starts to appear. In sandy soil, apply the fertilizer again 1 month later, after the first spring growth appears.

5. Mulch in the early summer with peat, leaf mold, compost or well-rotted manure. Place netting over the blueberry bushes to protect your berries from the birds.

6. Prune after the first 3 years of growth in the winter. Remember that the fruit will grow on last year's wood. Try cutting one or two of the oldest shoots back to a strong new shoot to promote new growth, which in turn will bear fruit the following year.

Tips & Warnings

• Be sure to grow 2 or more varieties of blueberry bushes for pollination.

• Blueberries love acid and will not grow well in alkaline soil, but blueberry bushes can be grown in a container. Fill the containers with an acid or peat-based compost, and don't add lime.

• If yellow mottling patches appear on your blueberry bush, and growth is poor, you may need to acidify the soil. Add peat moss and apply sulfur or iron chelates to the soil as the container directs.