North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Jim Fruth" <jimfruth@charter.net>]

Alan, I didn't say that!

   I just got a copy of my Pomona article and compared it to your post, 
below.  I think you need to re-read my article and then re-read your 
comments.  I DIDN'T SAY THOSE THINGS!  And where did you get the statements 
about iron?  I didn't even mention iron!  Could you be confusing my article 
with someone else's?
   As for your first sentence, below, It was you, not I, who said, 
"....................I have seen very healthy and productive blueberries 
growing in soils with a pH in the mid-6's...................  I didn't 
'send' an article, rather it was lifted from the posts.

Alan wrote:

In an article published in the summer edition of Pomona, Jim Fruth used a
statement I made on this site and and posed it as a question to him, which
it was not.  I just thought I'd set the record straight because I disagree
with the fundamental tenet of his article and to the way he evaluated the
observation that blueberries often thrive in near neutral soil.

He suggested that blueberries could only do well in neutral soils if the
calcium was somehow "deactivated".  He seems to be saying the the entire
rhizophere has to provide the blueberries equally the iron they need that is
often tied up by calcium.  In other words that iron availability has to be
homogeneous throughout the soil.

My theory, which has already been tested successfully in surface
applications of sulfur to correct iron deficiency in pin oaks in alkaline
soils by Carl Whitcomb, is that only a fraction of the soil profile has to
have available iron to serve the needs of  acid loving plants.

In the case of blueberries that I have seen doing quite well in soils with a
pH well into the 6's, I believe that the fact that these plants are well
mulched may be the key to their vitality.  As the mulch decomposes acids are
released that free up adequate iron for the blueberries to get all the iron
they need.  This is the simplest explanation, so until someone researches a
contradicting explanation, it I'll run with it.