It depends upon what they are and what you did to them? Are they high bush, low bush, or rabbiteye blueberries? Rabbiteyes are normally more tolerant of southern heat and dought. I'm not sure from your post what part of Georgia you are in or know how hot it's been so far this summer. I can't tell for sure how big those are without a frame of reference for size. Unless those plants and pots are lots bigger than they look, you should pull all the fruit off this year and give the bushes more time to grow. Young fruit trees and bushes will sometimes bloom and bear fruit before the plants are strong enough to support them. It is sort of like kids having babies. They can do it sometimes before they are really ready to do it correctly. These plants look very small and are having to put all the plant's energy into making this small first crop of berries. If you pull the fruit off this year, the plants will be able to put all their energy into building the plant's roots and limbs, otherwise it can stunt the plant for several years. Based upon the relative size of the pots to one another, I'll guess that these are 1/2, 1, and 3 gal containers. The ones in the smaller pots are going through hell in Georgia's sun with those black pots. If they are in direct sunlight, the dirt in those pots is probably hot enough to bake a potato. I've just started trying to grow a home orchard in containers. I've grown fruit trees off and on for nearly 40 years, but I've just started trying to grow them in containers rather than the ground. I'm currently renting a house and wanted fruit trees, bushes, brambles, and vines that I could move when I buy a home and move in a few years. I've got my stuff in 25 gal plastic tote containers (18"*20"*16" generic rubbermaid). I bought light tan ones that I hoped wouldn't get as hot, but the dirt still gets fairly hot around the outside, but my containers are big enough to still give the roots room to grow closer to the center. I used to live in Macon 30 years ago and tried to grow blueberries there with mixed results. I had soil that was 1 foot of sand above brick hard red clay, with high temps and humidity. Some of the highbush had problems, but rabbiteyes did well for me then. The highbush did fine the first spring until summer heat went to 100 and then some looked sort of like this, as if someone hit them with a weedkilling flame thrower. Since my soil was all wrong for blueberries, so I started 9 months ahead of time preparing the soil for them. I dug a pit 5' by 20' and 3' deep and removed all the soil. It was middle of summer, and the ground was so hard I couldn't dig more than few inches with a spade or rototiller. I used a post hole digger for our tractor and dug about 100 holes that were each 3 feet deep. After shoveling out the loose dirt, I filled the pit with straw, horse manure, leaves, and grass clippings with sulfur mixed in to lower the ph. I had a pile about 6 feet above the pit. I let it compost and settle down until it was cooled the next spring. I still had to add several gallons of vinegar to get the ph down to 5 before planting. Not many people were trying to grow blueberries that far south at that time, so all the local nurseries told me it would not work. One nursery where I ordered lots of other trees from agreed to make some special orders for me to get them. I got 15 blueberries of several varieties. More of them survived the first summer than I expected, so the second winter, I made the pit another 10 feet longer and moved the ones that survived around a bit to give them all more room. The 2nd summer I had a really good crop for several weeks. The brownest ones of yours look like they are already gone. You might be able to save the ones with some remaining green leaves, if you pull the fruit, can give them some partial shade from the late afternoon west sun, and can repot the smaller ones into at least 1 gal containers, but preferable 3 gal or larger. Good Luck, Greg

In case the link is ever broken, cut and paste the PDF file here: Linda Chalker-Scott, Ph.D., Extension Horticulturist and Associate Professor, Puyallup Research and Extension Center, Washington State University The Myth of Gypsum Magic âAdding gypsum to your yard or garden will improve soil tilth and plant healthâ The Myth Upon continued prodding from one of my university extension colleagues, I recently watched several episodes of a well-known gardening program on television. My kids joined me, alerted by my animated responses to the hostâs non-stop torrent of advice. Among many amazing discoveries I learned that by adding gypsum to my yard or garden I would improve my problem soils by changing the particle size and loosening compaction. Further searching on the web revealed that gypsum would also improve drainage, decrease acidity, and eliminate soil salts. Previously, I had heard of gypsum for use in soil reclamation projects, but not for a typical urban landscape. Since gypsum is simply calcium sulfate, could this chemical truly transform soil structure and serve as a fertilizer for yards and gardens? The Reality This myth falls into the category of agricultural practices misapplied to ornamental landscapes. Gypsum effectively changes the structure and fertility of heavy clay soils, especially those that are heavily weathered or subject to intensive crop production. Gypsum also improves sodic (saline) soils by removing sodium from the soil and replacing it with calcium. Therefore, one can see improvement in clay soil structure and fertility, and desalinization of sodium-rich soils, by using gypsum. What other effects will gypsum have on soil and plant health? There are a number of scientific studies on gypsum usage both in the literature and on websites. Briefly, researchers have found: ⢠Gypsum does not usually change soil acidity, though occasional reports of both increasing and decreasing pH exist; ⢠Gypsum can increase leaching of aluminum, which can detoxify soils but also contaminates nearby watersheds; ⢠Gypsum can increase leaching of iron and manganese, leading to deficiencies of these nutrients; ⢠Gypsum applied to acid soils can induce magnesium deficiency in plants on site; ⢠Gypsum applied to sandy soils can depress phosphorus, copper and zinc transport; ⢠Gypsum can have negative effects on mycorrhizal inoculation of roots, which may account for several reports of negative effects of gypsum on tree seedling establishment and survival; ⢠Gypsum is variable in its effects on mature trees; ⢠Gypsum will not improve fertility of acid or sandy soils; ⢠Gypsum will not improve water holding capacity of sandy soils; and ⢠Gypsumâs effects are short-lived (often a matter of months) With the exception of arid and coastal regions (where soil salts are high) and the southeastern United States (where heavy clay soils are common), gypsum amendment is just not necessary in non-agricultural areas. Urban soils are generally amalgamations of subsoils, native and non-native topsoils, and - in home landscapes - high levels of organic and non-organic chemical additives. They are also heavily compacted and layered (and gypsum does not work well on layered soils). In such landscapes, it is pointless to add yet more chemicals in the form of gypsum unless you need to increase soil calcium levels. This nutrient deficiency can be quickly identified by any soil testing laboratory for less than a bag of gypsum costs. (If you need to improve sulfur nutrition, itâs wiser to use ammonium sulfate). To reduce compaction and improve aeration in nearly any landscape, application of an organic mulch is more economically and environmentally sustainable. The Bottom Line ⢠Gypsum can improve heavy clay soil structure and remove sodium from saline soils ⢠Gypsum has no effect on soil fertility, structure, or pH of any other soil type ⢠Most urban soils are not improved by additional gypsum ⢠Before adding gypsum or any chemical to a landscape, have soil analysis performed to identify mineral deficiencies, toxicities, and soil character ⢠Adding gypsum to sandy or non-sodic soils is a waste of money, natural resources, and can have negative impacts on plant, soil, and ecosystem health For more information, please visit Dr. Chalker-Scottâs web page at http://www.theinformedgardener.com.

Milyee, Posting pictures on here is really pretty easy. Here are the instructions... One of the easiest ways to provide your photo to be embedded into a post is to upload it onto an image hosting site such as Photobucket, Flickr, etc. That should be pretty straight forward, and the individual sites will give instructions on how to get your photos uploaded to their site when you sign up. Once your picture has been uploaded, find its image location address (URL) by right clicking on the image and copying the image location. The URL will look something like: http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg. Some sites may even provide the appropriate HTML code in a text box below the photo for your convenience. It will be the one that begins with a href=... (This code looks different than the code below, because it will actually produce a picture link instead of just a picture.) Let's say, as an example, that the address of the picture you want to post is http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg To embed the picture into a post, use the command: img src="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg"> _____________________________________ If your picture is too large to fit nicely into the text page, you can add a width attribute. The command with the width attribute would look something like: img src="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg" width=600> _____________________________________ Another option is to use a text link which might be beneficial to people on slow connections. To do this, use the command: a href="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg">your text goes here/a> _____________________________________ Note that I had to use special characters to get the commands above to show up here without turning into pictures, but you can use them as shown (but with the correct image web address).

Yes Jason, the "beside my house" is the salient point here. That tree, which BTW is not exactly "diseased", could remain vertical for longer than any of us on this board. But it might not. And there's a target below if it should fail. Now about what I said; A portion of the tree is decayed. That's not exactly the same thing as "diseased". I know this just looks like nit-picking but it's not. A tree, that tree, can be totally healthy yet still have a large column of decay in it. Happens all the time in fact. That decay is not doing anything whatsoever to the parts of the tree that aren't right adjacent to that which is decayed already. I better quit. None of this makes any difference to the matter at hand-an unsafe tree next to your house. +oM