fertilizing companies recommend feeding in both spring and fall ==>> did you expect anything else ???? have a soil test done.. amend pH ..no guessing here ... [contact your county extension office for tests] and if you have an otherwise healthy soil.. the thing will probably never 'NEED" anything ... though a little this or that wont hurt .... dont guess.. and dont think they are children that need to be FED .... acid loving plants.. need an acidic soil.. NOT FOOD!!! .. do you see the dichotomy???? make sense ... ken ps: i bet you wont find an acid soil company.. lol ....

Sometimes plants in pots newly from the nursery behave differently than they will in your garden since they were growing in different conditions. Jim Dandy is the recommended male for MB, so I would plant them and see what happens next year. There is the possibility that one might be mislabeled. Here is chart that shows bloom time for the different males, and though it doesn't show your female you can see the relative bloom times of the males.

Yes. Female holly flowers have that green dome in the centre which will become the berry. Anything which can move from a male flower to a female can pollinate. But since m and f are on separate trees I doubt ants do it for hollies.

I have been growing a winterberry holly Sprite in zone 6a. I had two of the female plants, but deer feed on them so consistently that one died. What has happened for me is that pollination was very iffy in morning shade. The plants flowered, no problem. The pollinators, however, only visited the few branch tips that reached into the sun. It is still cool when my winterberry hollies flower, and my pollinators did not want to ventures into the shade! My male pollinator is on a steep sunny hillside hidden from my view. It stays quite dry there. The plant does not look a nice as it did when I grew it on level ground with more moisture, but it still lives and flowers well. I have moved my existing female Sprite to a place that is still only part sun, but gets that sun from 8:30. am to 11:30 am, which coincides with my pollinators peak activity. I can't tell you yet if this will be successful, as flowering has not begun for me yet this season. I hope this helps a bit!