How to Grow Blueberries

I'm Mark Viette, and I'm going to give you a few tips on how to grow the very best blueberries right in your own backyard. You know I shop and I find that you know, sometimes you can find really good fresh tasting blueberries but many times you'll find them in these very tiny containers and they're not sweet and fresh tasting. So you can grow them right in your own back yard. There's just a couple things you need to keep in mind. Blueberries enjoy bright shade, a little protection from the sun. They'll even grow in full sun but it's important to remember that you need to have at least three different types of blueberries so they can cross pollinate. So I've got three blueberries right around me here. They're blooming at the same time. So that's important too. Depending on where you live it's important that you check what types of blueberries will grow in your own back yard and make sure you get the three different varieties that are blooming at the same time. The other thing that I learned is blueberries do like to be rejuvenated and pruned. Now I failed to do that with these blueberries here. So you're going to notice some dead and dying parts of these blueberries. I had a choice of trying to bring these back into great production or how to start all of it with brand new plants and let's look at some of the new plants that I've got and how you should plant them. You could purchase blueberries bare root through the mail or you can find blueberries that are grown in containers and one of the things that you'll notice here is this plant is well rooted. I am moving the plant and it's hard to move it back and forth. That means there's a great root system, that's real important. This is about one year old. To save a little bit on time I'm going to go ahead and also talk about a more established blueberry. This is more like two, maybe three years old. Many numerous stems coming from the base of the plant and if you look, you can see about 200 blueberries that have already been produced. Remember you need to get three different varieties and if you buy them like this that are well established, you can see by pulling this out of the container it has a fantastic root system and you can see it's made up of bark and peat moss as the soil. They really like a low pH so you really don't want to use a lot of organic compost made up of leaves. You might want to use something like peat moss and I really like to use what is known as cottonseed meal. It is a fantastic organic fertilizer. I like to use the organic cottonseed meal and you broadcast that around your plants or you mix it in the soil when you plant them and really when you start out with a blueberry plant like this it won't take but maybe one year before you can see great production right in your own backyard. It's really simple and easy and well worthwhile to grow blueberries. I'm Mark Viette and this is how simple and easy blueberries can be to add right to your garden.