First off, blueberries are generally planted in the fall or early spring, or that's what I recall when I bought mine last year (planted them in October). Remember that blueberries need VERY acidic soil (4.5 pH)and have shallow roots. I amended my soil with compost for nutrients and peat moss for water retention and acidity, though likely not enough. I read recently that 1/3 of the material to plant blueberries should be peat. Pine needles are good for acid, and so is Miracle Gro Acid Loving fertilizer. I don't recall off hand when to fertilize but it's not yet. Finally, multch with something acidic and weed like crazy, because they don't compete well with weeds due to their shallow roots. I too have blackberries growing wild behind my house such that only we have access to harvest them. In the Pacific NW, we don't have year round growth, but we do get a decent crop. My son is a blueberry fiend, so that's why I bought two high-bush blueberry plants (different varieties so they cross polinate). I'm hoping in a year or two they'll keep him happy for most of the summer. Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's gardening adventure

I've been gardening now in my home for 27 years and can only go by my experience, but I don't have problems with MG potting mix causing any problems in my gardens. When first dug, as there where no gardens anywhere on the acre of land we purchased with our home, I added plenty of peat, humous and top soil to the gardens. Kept turning them over and over and planted a few annuals the first year. As my gardens expanded to many different ones, I would put a handful of MG potting mix in the hole when the seedlings went in the ground. I always fertilized with MG fertilizer. My container pots got miracle grow potting mix in them and at the end of the season, the soil went into a compost area for next season. In the spring it was loaded with worms etc. I would mix the compost and MG soil in the containers and use the MG potting mix when planting in the gardens and the MG fertilizer for the plants. All of my flower and veggie beds are covered with bark mulch purchased by cubic yards from a local nursery and it decays over time into the soil. 4 years ago, I started WS seeds and used MG potting mix in all my containers to start the seeds and have had at least 90% germination every year. What ever didn't germinate went into a "let's see what happens" bed and some seeds have germinated in the area. I just let mother nature water them and see what happens. As I have dug out these seedlings do transplant I have found many, many earth worms in the soil there that is mostly sand and MG potting mix. This past fall, I wasn't in the best of health as I was emptying my containers of soil for the winter and decided to just dump the soil in left over plastic bags that had held the many cubic feet of MG potting mix I had purchased. I left the soil in the bags in the back of the house all winter. They where covered in snow, rained on, sleet, ice etc. Typical stuff for winter in New England. I hoped that the sun and heat within the bags would make a compost that was fairly good to use. Well, Saturday I decided to check the soil and see what had happened to it. Hubby dumped one of the bags that was almost full, making it about 2 cubic feet of soil, into a lawn cart. It smelled rich and much like a compost and it was full of earth worms. At least 30 of them in that one bag. Based on what I found in just 1 bag out of 4 of them, I fail to see how the MG soil is such a problem to the ground and gardens that we have. If, as you say, the MG potting mix would deplete the soil of good nutrients and not good for the soil, how is it that I have a bags of it left outside and they are full of earthworms, smells like compost and looks rich and healthy. I have had my soil tested many times in the areas of my gardens and the soil has always been good for my plants and that's with use of MG fertilizer. Now my lawns are another story, but I just keep digging up more and more of it as I think beautiful green lawns are a waste of time and money. New England weather does not produce perfect green lawns unless lots of chemical stuff and water is used. I prefer to have beautiful gardens instead. The only pesticide I have ever used is roundup on poison ivy and I don't like to use it but have no choice. My daughter is anaphylactly allergic to the stuff and when she was young, almost died twice from contact with it. My gardens are full of healthy beneficial insects, butterflies, birds etc. The only insects I gave up on dealing with is the red lily leaf beatle. When that problem became an hourly pick off the things, I pulled out all my lilies and got rid of them. Too many other beautiful plants to put in the ground without dealing with them. I recycle everything we possibly can, separating for the recycle pick up. For WS, we use only the recylces that are deep enough. My plastic bags are on their 4th year of use and still appear to be able to reuse another year, as are most of my containers. The ones we can't use, will go in the recycle bin. I use styrofoam cups for plant swaps and ask that the cups be returned for use in follow up years and they have been. The ones I use for starting seeds in, are in their 4th year of use right now and still in good shape for another year. When they can't be used anymore for seeds, I will break them up and use them in the bottom of containers for drainage. Personally, I think there are many more concerns for our gardens than he worry about MG soil. Bees disappeared from my gardens until the neighbors moved. They had to have a perfect lawn and the chemicals the lawn company used kept the bees away. Now they are gone and the insects are back. The attitude the public has "a little bit is good so a lot is better", is the dangerous thing. The products that are sold to the public and used for everything under the sun are a much bigger concern. The aim for a perfect lawn and all Scotts perfect lawn method is far more serious than MG soil problems, if they exist. It's improper use of chemicals that is the real problem. Just wish they could come up with a way to eradicate the misquito. that one serves no purpose and their bite can kill people. Like a student in high school that was a student of my daughter. That scares me a lot. Not MG potting mix. Fran

You're right about the nitrate in the MG product that I'm using, Jay -- I'd forgotten that it's in there, but it doesn't really worry me given that it's a relatively small percentage overall. I'll admit that, in the past, I've even used Dynamite and Osmocote CRFs (both with a much higher percentage of nitrate) without any obvious detrimental effects. I switched to the Shake 'n Feed as a compromise. I don't like some aspects of it (high K and Ca, low N), but I like the fact that it provides a pretty good blend of micronutrients and provides most of its N in the forms of urea and ammonium. I hope to offset the low N with my soluble fertilizer applications -- usually a combo of 1/4 tsp each of Jack's Classic Acid and regular Miracle Gro every two to three weeks. I'm glad that I brought up Gertens product, fruitnut. I've almost bought it on more than one occasion but held off because of the lack of info.

The Schultz product supplies far more P than plants want or can use, which is reason enough not to use it, but it also lacks many important nutrients (Ca, Mg, and several micronutrients), and it gets it's N from urea, which tends to promote coarse growth and long internodes. It really is a poor choice as your 'go to' fertilizer for houseplants. The Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 is a FAR better choice. Even Miracle-Gro 12-4-8 which lacks the same nutrients missing from the Schultz 10-15-10 is a superior choice because the ratio (3:1:2) much more closely mimics the ratio at which your plants actually utilize nutrients. Also, Superthrive = snake oil. The question regarding the value of Superthrive as a miracle tonic for plants is often bandied about in horticultural circles. Over the years, I had read claims that ranged from, “I put it on my plant, which had never bloomed, and it was in full bloom the next day.” to, “It was dead - I put Superthrive on it and the next day it was alive and beautiful, growing better than it ever had before.” I decided to find out for myself. If you look for information on the net, you will probably only find the manufacturer’s claims and anecdotal observations, both so in want of anything that resembles a control. Though my experiments were far from purely scientific, I tried to keep some loose controls in place so that I could make a fair judgment of its value, based my own observations. Here is what I did, what I found, and the conclusions I made about any value the product Superthrive might hold for me. On four separate occasions, I took multiple cuttings of plants in four different genera. In each case the group of cuttings were taken from the same individual plant to reduce genetic variance. The plant materials I used were: Ficus benjamina, (a tropical weeping fig) Luna apiculata (Peruvian myrtle), Chaenorrhinum minus(a dwarf snapdragon), and an unknown variety of Coleus. In each instance, I prepared cuttings from the same plant and inserted them in a very fast, sterile soil. The containers containing half of the cuttings were immersed/soaked in a Superthrive solution of approximately 1/2 tsp per gallon of water to the upper soil line. The other half of the cuttings were watered in with water only. In subsequent waterings, I would water the “Superthrive batch” of cuttings with a solution of 10 drops per gallon and the others with only water. The same fertilizer regimen was followed on both groups of cuttings. In all four instances, the cuttings that I used Superthrive on rooted and showed new growth first. For this reason, it follows that they would naturally exhibit better development, though I could see no difference in overall vitality, once rooted. I can also say that a slightly higher percentage of cuttings rooted that were treated with the Superthrive treatment at the outset. I suspect that is directly related to the effects of the auxin in Superthrive hastening initiation of root primordia before potential vascular connections were destroyed by rot causing organisms. In particular, something I looked for because of my affinity for a compact form in plants was branch (stem) extension. (The writer is a bonsai practitioner.) Though the cuttings treated with Superthrive rooted sooner, they exhibited the same amount of branch extension. In other words, internode length was approximately equal and no difference in leaf size was noted. As a second part to each of my “experiments”, I divided the group of cuttings that had not been treated with Superthrive into two groups. One of the groups remained on the water/fertilizer only program, while the other group was treated to an additional 10 drops of Superthrive in each gallon of fertilizer solution. Again, the fertilizer regimen was the same for both groups. By summer’s end, I could detect no difference in bio-mass or vitality between the two groups of plants. Since I replicated the above experiment in four different trials, using four different plant materials, I am quite comfortable in drawing some conclusions as they apply to me and my growing habits or abilities. First, and based on my observations, I have concluded that Superthrive does hold value for me as a rooting aid, or stimulant if you prefer. I regularly soak the soil, usually overnight, of my newly root-pruned and often bare-rooted repots in a solution of 1/2 tsp Superthrive per gallon of water. Second, and also based on my observations, I no longer bother with its use at any time other than at repotting. No evidence was accumulated through the 4 trials to convince me that Superthrive was of any value as a “tonic” for plants with roots that were beyond the initiation or recovery stage. Interestingly, the first ingredient listed as being beneficial to plants on the Superthrive label is vitamin B-1 (or thiamine). Growing plants are able to synthesize their own vitamin B-1 as do many of the fungi and bacteria having relationships with plant roots, so it's extremely doubtful that vitamin B-1 could be deficient in soils or that a growing plant could exhibit a vitamin B-1 deficiency. Some will note that I used more of the product than suggested on the container. I wanted to see if any unwanted effects surfaced as well as trying to be sure there was ample opportunity for clear delineation between the groups. I suspect that if a more dilute solution was used, the difference between groups would have been even less clear. It might be worth noting that since the product contains the growth regulator (hormone) auxin, its overuse can cause defoliation, at least in dicots. The broad-leaf weed killer Weed-B-Gone and the infamous “Agent Orange“, a defoliant that saw widespread use in Viet Nam, are little more than synthetic auxin. See what Linda Chalker-Scott PhD says about it. Al