You will also want to make sure that the soil you are planting them in has a PH of about 4-5 and keep it maintained by adding agricultural sulpher because it will try to stablize. Also in the summer or on hot days they require about a gallon of water per day. I have mine planted in pure peat and then mulched in about 4 inches of pine bark (the little pieces not big chunks)And you wont want to fertilize at all the first year or it will burn the roots. you will also want to pick all of the flowers off the first year or else it will send all of its energy into fruit instead of root and foliar growth which will make it harder for your plant to survive the hot texas days.

Most (all?) species of blueberries are theoretically capable of cross pollinating any other species. In practice, though, they need to have overlapping blooming times. "Southern highbush" isn't a separate species - genetically, it's mostly northern highbush crossed with one or more southern species of blueberries such as V. darrowi in order to adapt the highbush blueberry to southern climates. An interesting side-effect of the hybridizing process resulted in berries that are less tart than their pure-bred northern cousins. Consequently, southern highbush have been cross-bred with northern varieties in order to produce specimens that are well adapted to the middle climate zones, to improve the flavor, etc. Ozark blue is a complex hybrid produced by crossing a southern highbush (itself a hybrid) with a northern highbush; this results in lower percentage of its genes being "southern" than with a typical southern highbush. It's well adapted to the southern edge of northern highbush range. Legacy blueberry is the same concept - it's a cross of Elizabeth, one of the very best tasting northern varieties with a small amount of southern genes. Legacy, due to its very long blooming time, is recommended to pollinate late blooming rabbiteyes such as Desoto or Columbus. It also works well for most middle to late blooming northern highbush or southern highbush. I hope that helps.

With the size of your yard, several blueberry varieties, and having lots of plants to attract bees, pollination won't be a problem. It appears that we are in the same temp zone. I agree with Noogy in that Elliot and possible even the Reka, might get winter kill on stems during "low snowfall" winters. This past winter, we had very little snowfall cover in northern MN. Only 2 of my 33 blueberry bushes had less than a 50% dieback on their above ground growth because of this. I stopped fertilizing by the end of June to prevent new growth late in the season as well, and the plants could harden off. Blue Crop was hit the worst with about 85% dieback on both new and some old growth. St Cloud, Chippewa, Polaris, and Friendship all had about 50% dieback. Mostly on their new growth. The 2 bushes with less than 10% dieback are older, low growing, bushes that I gifted and don't know the varieties unfortunately. Both have very large berry sets this year. I think that all of these varieties are more winter hardy than Elliot or Reka. I know that my sour cherry trees and bushes prefer fairly dry roots going into winter. My blueberry bushes had moist, but not wet roots during the fall and when the ground froze. Should they have had even more water? They are all heavily mulched with 3 to 4 " of pine needles.

Hello tc88, Yes,the Bountiful Blue,Misty,Sunshine Blue and Legacy kept most of their leaves.Some others,like Star and Sweetcrisp,I recently acquired,so I'll find out next Winter. The leaves on some Southern Highbush,like Misty,to me, are kind of funky anyway,so some of them can get kind of crinkly looking,but I don't think I'd call it a disease.They seem to fair well here. This area does get it's share of rain,usually in November and December,but the overcast is the thing.Some places will get a lot of rain all at once and then it will clear up.Here,the gray may stay for a few days with not much precipitation. One Winter,I had to cover the Bountiful and Sunshine because snow was building up on the leaves and could have broken some branches and an ice storm came right after. Brady