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David Handley: I'm David Handley with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
Today we're going to talk about planting your blueberries.
Now, we've got the site all ready and you can see our previous video for information
on that.
Now it's time to put these in the ground.
The best time to plant your blueberries is in the early spring.
You don't have to wait until things are too warm.
They can go in the ground just as soon as you can work that soil up without it being
too terribly muddy.
So wait for the soil to dry out a bit, but that's the time to plant your blueberries.
Now typically what we get from a nursery is a one or two year old plant.
It will be about this size, somewhere between a foot and two feet tall with hopefully a
nice, good root system down at the bottom.
We can buy these either bare root, as you see here, or sometimes you can buy them in
pots, too, if you're just buying them from a local garden center.
It doesn't matter.
Both plants will work perfectly well.
If you're buying plants in quantity, the bare root is a cheaper way to go.
So with this, we just want to unwrap them when they come wrapped up like this.
You can see we've got a nice, fine root system here ready to go.
If it looks a little compacted, don't be afraid to work your fingers in there and loosen things
up a bit and get that ready to plant and ready to go.
Now we want to dig a good sized hole for a blueberry plant.
You can see here, I've got a ten dollar hole for a five dollar plant.
That's exactly what we want to have here.
We're going to take the soil out of there and we're going to blend this soil one to
one with some good source of organic matter.
I like to use peat moss.
It can be a little expensive if you're putting a lot of plants in the ground.
As we talked about in our previous video, you can also use compost if you like.
Just be aware that the PH of the compost may be a little high for blueberries.
You want to keep this PH about 4.8 to 5.2.
The soil I've dug out of this hole, I just want to blend it one to one with that peat
moss.
Just work that peat moss nicely into the soil.
And then that is what I'm going to backfill with.
I put my plant in the hole.
I spread the roots out a little bit and I want to plant this plant at the same depth
it was in the nursery.
In other words, I want the soil to come right up to the top of the plant, maybe just a hair
deeper.
But we don't need to plant it too terribly deep.
I'm going to fill a little of this blend back in to get this to the height I want it.
Spread those roots out a bit.
Break up any crust that might be at the top.
If it's got a little crown that's developed at the top, break that down because that can
work as a wick and actually if that gets above the soil it can actually dry the root system
out, acting like a wick like that.
We break that down, loosen those roots up without tearing them too badly, then backfill
with our blend.
Add a little more peat moss here.
Just backfill with that and just press that down in place.
Make sure the soil is nice and packed around it.
We don't want to leave that part of the plant popped up, like I said, because that will
dry it out.
When we've pressed this soil around we want to end it such that you have a little bit
of a dish going around the bush, a little bit of a depression.
The reason we're doing this is so that when we water this plant in the water will collect
there.
Nice and firm around there.
Just again, just build that soil up and a little bit of a dish around there.
And then we can just water that plant in.
Make sure it's getting a good drink.
Come back after this water is soaked in.
Give it another drink.
And then we come back and add some mulch to that.
We like to mulch our plants right away because the mulch will help conserve the moisture
that's there and it will prevent any weed seeds that are in the soil from popping up
and germinating.
Most weed seeds need a little bit of light to stimulate them to germinate.
So after that water has soaked in, we can use something nice like pine needles for a
good mulch.
We could use wood chips.
We could use bark.
Whatever's available.
I like pine needles because they're readily available, they're relatively inexpensive.
We want to put a good, thick layer around this, six to eight inches thick.
Just tuck it right around that plant, covering up that bowl that we've made.
Just enough to keep the weeds out.
Compress it a little bit so the wind doesn't blow it away.
And we're good to go.
Now I don't believe in doing a lot of heavy pruning at planting time.
If you've got any very weak shoots that are there or shoots that are growing along the
ground or shoots that are broken, you can trim off something that's very, very weak.
But other than that, it's pretty much leave them alone at this point.
Heavy pruning at this point is actually going to stress the plant out.
It's going to try to put a lot of vegetative vigor on and it hasn't got a good enough root
system to support that at this time.
If you've got plant tags on, it's a good idea to staple these to a wooden or a metal stake
and put them to the side.
Leaving them on here when the stem starts to grow, it can actually girdle them.
Now, after these plants have been in the ground for a few weeks, these little buds on the
shoots are going to break and we'll see some leaves.
You may also see some flower clusters up near the tip.
In the planting year, you want to rub those flower clusters off because we're not asking
the plant to put all its energy into fruit production.
We want to develop new shoots, new roots to get this bush off to a good start.
And that's it.
If we're going on to our next plant, we want to make sure that one's about five feet away
down the row.
And if we're actually going to have a second row, the second row needs to be about eight
feet apart.
So five foot spacing in the row and about eight feet between rows if you go with more
than one.
Now most blueberry plants require a friend for crosspollination so it's best to plant
more than one variety to make sure that the bees are going to move the pollen around and
give you good fruit set.
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