I'm not a blueberry expert, but I'm shocked to hear that a pH of 5.8 is too high, shocked and dismayed because I am planning to plant blueberries in my pH 7.8 soil today. I will be applying elemental sulfur, pine straw and every other kind of sour material I can get my hands on to lower the pH.

I would have thought that 5.8 is about right for blueberries.

idaho gardener - this isn't your day! I just ran a quick google search (pH for growing blueberries) & the brief intro's on the the top 2 noted
- optimal 4.6 - 4.8, but 4.0 to 5.2 is ok
- should be below 5.5

ouch - I hate when someone throws a monkey wrench in my plans too!

Good luck, All the Best, Tree

BTW, papercarver - I have no idea how to do that! I'm from MASS though! Go Red Sox!

I don't think the pine needles will have much of an effect.

The sulfur should be covered by several inches of soil and then watered in. Sulfur that is on the surface will combine with oxygen in the air to produce Sulfur dioxide instead of combining with water to produce sulfurous acid.

When the sulfur is buried, there are bacteria that digest it and combine it with water to produce sulfurous acid. This takes several months, but also has long lasting effects. I don't think it should take years to get it ready for blueberries, unless they anticipate that you'll need to add sulfur on multiple occasions.

Idaho, on the off chance that you're not joking, I don't think you'll have much luck growing blueberries in your native soil. You'll have the best chance at success if you do something like a raised bed or containers. And with either of those, you'll need to make sure you get soil that will work. If you buy bulk topsoil anywhere near you, it's not likely to be much lower in pH than your soil.

I would "guess" that your blueberries will grow okay in 5.8.
Sure a bit lower is "optimum", but the acidic soil, as is, would grow blueberries.

If you check the soil where the wild blueberries grow, the pH is probably not exactly the optimum either.

Idaho, on the other hand, is not going to have good luck with blueberries in the soil that she has...without serious amendments.

Well, I went ahead and stuck the blueberries in the ground anyway. I did add sulfur (and superphosphate and coffee grounds). I didn't expect a crop this year, I'm just hoping to get something started and maybe see a crop next year.

Papercarver, sulfur is probably what you need, although I would think that humic and fulvic acids would also help. I'll be top-dressing the soil under my blueberries with some tomorrow.

I hope you didn't till. That can seriously mess up the septic field.

Questions: at what depth did you dig the soil sample, and why would the leachfield soil be more alkaline than the average native soil in the area? A leachfield is covered with clean sand over the gravel, with perhaps some kind of thin soil spread over that to support grass. If it's functioning properly there should be no effect from the effluent much above the level of the pipes themselves; the sand should be rather acidic; so it would seem to come down to whatever was spread over the sand.

I agree that blueberries should be ok in 5.8 ph. I just planted some in an area where I've been spreading wood-ash for years, so we'll see......

Thanks everyone for your comments - much appreciated!

jean001 : I haven't done anything to the field yet other than take the soil samples. By till do you mean rototill? I *was* planning to tear up what sod has grown and incorporate the sulfur into the soil - I'm thinking I'd disturb the top 8" of soil, above the sand level of the field. Do you think this would still be a bad idea (I think I'll call the guy who laid the field and ask him, too)?

pnbrown: the soil samples were taken from about 8-10" inches down. Unfortunately, neither my husband nor I can remember if the soil on the leach field came from our yard or not! I think the "topsoil" may have been trucked in from somewhere else...
BTW, aren't wood ashes added to make the soil more basic (and thus less hospitable to blueberries)?

thanks again to all,
papercarver

Yes, I had been dusting on the ash to discourage brambles and PI, or rather to encourage grass and thistle and dock and others that enjoy a higher ph and could give the former a run for their money.

Then I rather impulsively did some clearing and thought it good spot for blueberries. My hope is that I didn't raise the ph too much, and in any case wood ash effect is fairly short-lived.

Yes, wood ash is alkaline. I've been avoiding growing edibles in my leachfield area. Sounds like I can make better use of that space! I was happy to read this thread.

My desert soil is alkaline. I've got a few blueberries growing in large pots. I put in a lot of peat when I mixed up the soil for the potted blueberries, and I mulched with pine needles.

There are folks who claim pine needles don't add acidity. I've been mulching strawberries with pine needles for years with good results, so when I added blueberries to my garden, I used pine needle mulch for them, too. An elderly organic gardener told me about using pine needles. She claimed that water passing through the pine needles will up the ante on the soil's acidity.

Lorna (Salem, MA is my hometown)

Papercarver, I have a brother who was formerly from Newburyport and he now lives on a lake in Amesbury. He runs a business in Newburyport.

When I prepared my raspberry beds, I used a lot of old spruce tree duff that had been under a 30' spruce. I'm pretty sure it's not hurting the soil's pH.

I'll have to get a better pH measuring system. What I use now is not very accurate. I'd love to know with some accuracy what my garden beds and compost pile pH are.

Plum Island! What a drop dead gorgeous place!

I went on a garden tour once and one of the places was an all native yard. The blueberry ground cover was really beautiful and lush. You probably know that blueberries undergo foliage change in the fall just like our trees do.

Hi everyone:

Thanks for all of your comments! This is what I've decided to do: I'm going to amend the soil this summer, let it lay fallow over the winter and put the berries in early next spring.

To do this I'm going to "roundup" the marginal amount of grass on the site and turn over the soil/sod, incorporating elemental sulfur and pine sawdust (and pine needles if I can find a source). I'm not planning to dig down past about 8" - I've been told by several folks that as long as I don't go into the sand or gravel of the field I should be ok. Once that's done, I'll mulch the whole shebang with pine chips for the winter.

I would like to plant blueberry sod, but the price for the size area I'm covering ($3/ft) is pretty steep for me (plus husband will have a heart attack). I've found a source in Fryeburg, Maine that sells lowbush blueberry plugs and so I'm thinking I'll go with that, or perhaps a combination of plugs and sod.

This is all kind of risky, given how dry the leach field gets in the high summer, but a) I think the mulch with help somewhat; and b) there are lots of blueberries growing on Plum Island on the sand dunes and they seem to survive the lack of water ok.

So, once again thanks for all of your interest. If any of you have leads on other sources for lowbush blueberry stock I'd appreciate the tips. I'll post a follow up next spring (hopefully with pictures) to show what I did.

Have a lovely growing season,

papercarver