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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