North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[John S <swim_at_svc@yahoo.com>]

Mark, I have a couple of dozen blueberry plants (not including seedlings) and have been exploring propagation for the past few years, on a casual basis.  My experiences follow:

1) Cuttings - to date I have had no success with cuttings, with or without rooting hormones

2) Tip layering - not tried

3) Stem layering (limited mounding) - some success but see notes

4) Limited divisions - successful

5) Seeds - highly successful

The divisions I have done have all involved a rapidly growing plant that has put out shoots from the root zone typcially a few inches from the main plants.  I dig down about halfway between the main plant and shoot, cut the root and transfer the shoot to a nursery pot with minimal root disruption so that they get extra attention.  Established shoots with roots handle this procedure quite well.  Media for this transplant is always 50/50 peat/sand.

I have found that if you can find a stem that is very close to the bottom of the plant and mound peat/sand mix over the stem from the mother plant to the tip, that roots will eventually develop and you can take the stem as a plant in a year or two.  Check for roots first before taking the cutting. 

Lastly, if you want a LOT of plants and don't mind evaluating and waiting a bit, you can start blueberry plants easily from seed.  I'm talking easily hundreds, thousands of plants.  I've done this a couple of times now.  Ferment in water and plant on surface of peat/sand mix, keep moist and you will succeed.  Of course, starting from seed means that you will not get the same variety as the named ones and quality can vary, but you will also learn a lot about blueberries and their needs through the process.  Yesterday I was out looking at the seedling nursery plants, finding some with purple, some with scarlet and some with green leaves from the weather change, all from the same seed batch.  They also appear to vary much in vigor so I will be culling some next year.

John



--- On Thu, 11/6/08, Mark Angermayer <hangermayer@isp.com> wrote:

From: Mark Angermayer <hangermayer@isp.com>
Subject: [NAFEX] Blueberry questions
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008, 1:05 AM

Could any of you blueberry gardeners/growers help me with a few blueberry
questions?  Our soil has a pH of 6.8 with a lot of organic matter.  I'd
like
to put in about 40 feet of blueberries.

1.  I've heard blueberries can grow in soil pretty close to neutral, but
I'd
like to try
 to do it by the book and go ahead and acidify the soil.  I was
thinking about growing blueberries in bales of peat, as Pete does, but
considering others around here grow blueberries in the soil, I probably
don't have to use straight peat.  However, I would like to mix peat in the
soil.  My question is how many peat bales would I need for 40 feet of
blueberries?

2.  I plan to amend the soil next spring with peat and sulfur, then do a
soil test in the summer for some final amendments, and plant the blueberries
the following spring.  Any potential problems with this approach?

3.  Unfortunately, the best drained soil we have, with the highest organic
matter is slightly uphill from our orchard area, so the water runs-off down
in the orchard.  Considering we get about 40 inches of rain/year, should I
be worried the acid run-off from the blueberries will alter the pH of some
of the orchard area?  They say sulfur
 is fairly mobile, just how mobile is
it?

4. The folks around here that grow blueberries, grow northern highbush, so
I'll probably try that.  But, we are in zone 6 and can get some pretty hot
summers.  We generally have a month with the highs in the 90s and a week
with the highs at 100F.  Will this affect the NH berries negatively?

5. Blueberry plants are kind of expensive (at least compared to blackberry
plants).  If we purchased just a few blackberry plants, how hard would it be
to propagate our own?  I'm not willing to set up a misting bed, so I'd
be
looking at either dividing the plants, or burying the tips of some of the
shoots in the soil.  Has anyone rooted blueberries, by tip layering?
Success?  If you divide the plants, ow long do you have to wait before you
can start dividing?

6. I've read you can plant NH blueberries at 3 or 4 foot spacing.  I'd
like
to be more exact.  Should it be
 3ft. or 4 ft.?  I plan to plant between row
spacing at 7 ft.  I know that's a little narrow, but I don't have any
equipment to run down between the rows, and since I plan to mulch all the
area between the rows, I want them as narrow as possible.

Thanks in advance for any ideas/advice.

Mark
KS

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