I want to put a few blueberry bushes on one edge of my vegetable garden. I have some sulpher to change the ph for them. How far will this spread into the rest of the garden? Anyone have any experience with this? (Ohio zone 5)
I live on ten acres (mostly forest) that includes roughly 2 to 3 acres of wild blueberries. These guys love to spread. I can't even keep them from migrating into my lawn which gets limed annually. If you plant them, treat them like a plot of strawberries or raspberries and be prepared to wage battle after a couple years.
Oh, they love peat too. Lots of peat.
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Zone 5a in Canada's Blueberry Rich Far East
would you consider an underground barrier? something like vinyl siding, one foot deep. If not, my uneducated guess is that it will spread about ten feet eventually. How do I know that? I just consider the grass near my neighbor fence (he has horses, and two spots near the fence are where they prefer to manure) compared to the grass away from it (in poor sandy soil, it is much sparser and not as green).
I planted some in Arkansas that I ordered from a grower, and they didnt spread at all. What little growth they did, was all was around the base of each plant.
You need to keep a pH down around 4 to 5.5 for them to do really well.
Dwayne
Insofar as your acid soil extends they will propagate. Problem is, in normal soil, keeping things sufficiently acid is not so easy. I find that blueberries thrive as an underplanting in a pine/spruce/fir plot that is exposed to some direct sun during the day. Lacking such natural acidity, if you do not faithfully keep on top of them with acidifiers, they will die. Just my experience.
If I were to keep them inside a garden fence I would keep them in beds of their own that I could acidify individually, without stepping on the toes of other veggies or plants.
J.
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