This will give you an idea of how my plants have done Appletree. This is two years after planting a 10 inch start. I'm not sure there is a "best way" to grow blues, even experts have a wide range on what's "best". Some say only pots, others say ammending the soil with sulfur and wait for ph to adjust, others add peat and pine, etc. I have been growing blues for about 8 years and have tried several approaches, most worked. The one big mistake I made was buying some older plants and I never could get most to grow. The best luck I have had has been with healthy young plants. Your plants are gonna do great. Did you say you are a biologist? I am too and that's why I asked. This post was edited by riverman1 on Fri, Apr 4, 14 at 11:03

It looks like you've found your answer Fruitnut. Since there has been some confusion about what pH is, I wanted to add a few comments about it. I don't remember that much about it myself, but have had discussions with my daughter, and she's pretty brainy on the topic. It's interesting to me how it works, and this is how I understand it. pH measures the amount of positively charged H ions/cations. The small "p" stands for the latin term pondus (weight) and the "H" stands for the term Hydrogen (That's why the "p" is always lower case, and the "H" is upper case.) The reason the pH scale is logarithmic is that a solution with a neutral pH of 7 will have 10 to the minus 7 moles of Hydrogen ions per liter. A solution with pH of 6 will have 10 to the minus 6 moles of Hydrogen ions per liter (10 to the minus 6 being 10 times more than 10 to the minus 7). So as the pH reduces there is a greater and greater concentration of hydrogen ions till you finally get to a theoretical pH of 0, which would be 10 to the zero power, or one. In other words the solution would be more or less 100% hydrogen ions. Interestingly, there is also a pOH scale which also measures alkaline/acidity and is the inverse of the pH scale. OH is a negatively charged ion/anion. A pOH of 8 would be the equivalent of a pH of 6. But what's interesting to me is how it comes together. Everyone knows water is H2O. In theoretical terms pure water has a pH of 7 and a pOH of 7. That means there are exactly as many free roaming H+ ions as there are OH- ions (10 to the minus 7 of each), which when come together form H2O. Sometimes pH probes can be in error because they only measure cations. Hydrogen is not the only cation. Sodium also has a plus one charge and Calcium has a plus 2 charge. The cheaper probes we are talking about will pick up Sodium and Calcium cations in their measurement. You can try it yourself to see if it affects your probe. Take a glass of water from the sink and measure the pH. Then add some table salt to the water and check again. Chances are the probe will indicate a reduction in pH, even though it hasn't really occurred. The probe is picking up the Sodium ions. I've tried it, and while the error isn't huge, there is some error.

strawberry hill, your post is so interesting. I've never tested my soil but knowing that it's basically decomposed granite (in some places solid granite just 1 1/2 feet down) is a good clue. Growing the right roses for your area, as has been emphasized on this forum over and over, is in my opinion the most important lesson to learn. Having once chosen the right ones, there are still steps that can be taken, as you point out, to fine-tune the results. A lot depends on how much you can or are willing to do. I've found that coffee grounds from my husband's coffee consumption, alfalfa meal and adequate water are the simplest way for me to have good-looking roses. Judicious pruning also has its place. Poisons never will; I'd give up roses first. It's part art, part science and part the will of the roses to live and thrive. It's a little different for everyone, and it is endlessly fascinating. Ingrid

Yeah ... lots of critical things to consider such as initial and changing pH effects*, buffering, multivalent cations, anionic and cationic micronutrients, and zeolite like ion exchange surfaces on soil particles, which make it a play day for chemistry discussions. Then the attack and breakdown of plant and animal litter to slow release nutrients brings up neat microbiology and biochemistry aspects. Material science then decides to manipulate the situation with osmotic release and diffusion of encapsulated nutrients. And hydroponic principles try to partially play nature taking over the hydrology and lighting it up. Physics kicks ideas in there on this last aspect. For instance did you know that fluorescent light indeed glow when struck by energy (as you know), but much of the light intensity flashes through a series of distinct colors at 60 times a second? * Plants cheat neatly by manipulating ion exchange release of cationic nutrients. They knock off ammonium, potassium, magnesium, calcium and other positively charged ions by producing acid(s) to knock it off. H+ alone can cause the exchange but if the acid is on a small organic base (anion) like oxalate this organic can diffuse around and pull at the cations on soil that the plant wants and help knock it off, helping in the "weathering" breakdown of soil too. Chelators made by plants and microbes make it really interesting too. They diffuse around and hold certain critical nutrients so tightly that the plant has the choice of finding more, having a deficiency (specific nutrient starving), making a stronger chelator to take it back, and/or breaking the chelator down to free the nutrient. Now the fun parts ... the plant one might be considering is not be alone. A group of similar or different roots might be working together AND competing in that patch of soil, with different players at different depths Trees cheat and certain non woody plants cheat and go low. Moles, gophers and field mice run through this soil zone toox playing their games. No soil contact then no nutrient uptake, no root then no nutrient collection there for the plant, loss of stored nutrients and need to spend energy replacing the root. And there are smaller life forms co-inhabating the soil with the roots that are also directly or indirectly effected by soil pH. Let's put them into three classes as those that (1) don't generally effect a plant much, (2) can hurt the plant, or (3) can help the plant. Let's see ... hurting a plant is bad, unless it hurts a seriously competitive plant more. Helping a plant is good, unless it's again that serious competitor. Plants are not stand alone organisms in naturem. They live in community with microorganisms. So what if the soil pH helps support the growth of a microbe that can grow all over your plants roots? Sounds bad I know, but there are those three classes mentioned above. If your microbe is a pathogen that is bad. If it doesn't attack the plant but runs out and breaks down nearby leaf litter, great free food. It it doesn't hurt your plant but by being on root surfaces can compete with and stop pathogenic microbes from getting a foothold, great a free natural inoculation for immunity. There was a company called Eden Bioscience a couple decades ago here in the PNW that made an interesting observation. In large scale evergreen seedling production for forestry sometimes there were large scale fungal blights. Sadly alot of the seedlings all died at once in mass. However, sometimes there were a few seedlings near each other that did not succumb! In fact they looked totally healthy! When isolating bacteria, yeast and filamentous fungi from the surfaces of these plants they found that certain kinds could be grown in the lab that protected seedlings from attack, when sprayed onto them. These microbes grew best in their optimal pH range. They indeed colonized the plants, in this case leaf surfaces. And their presence did protect the leaves from pathogen attack. Obviously similar things must be happening in nature in the leaf canopy and also soil root zone of plants. So when a plant likes acidic pH 5 - 6 soil, is this just because nutrients are more available it? When I went to school, in what now seems like the dark ages, most plant physiology books focused almost solely on this. Or is it because beneficial microbes helping feed or protect the plant need that pH? My firm assumption is that both chemical and microbial pH dependent effects interact to make an optimum environment for that plant. And that some plants in the natural environment survive best, rather than grow best, at their optimal pH range. Why do many fungi sour (strongly acidify) what they are busy rotting? Niether competive microbes nor does the dieing plant tissue like it. The fungus gets more. This is exactly why you want to check the pH in the soil that you might be soon preparing for your new vegetable or herb garden this spring. Too basic, your plants starve. Too acidic, the pathogenic fungi don't starve. Then like the heirloom story of The Three Bears ... there's one pH that's just right.