You have to be careful with fertilizer and Blueberries as they can not tolerate certain types of Nitrogen also they don't have conventional roots, they rely on a symbiotic relationship with soil bacteria to process Nitrogen.

holly tone is designed for blueberries and acid liking plants, but the instructions are vague.

"Dig a hole twice as wide and about as deep as the root ball. Discard 1/2 the soil removed and replace it with good humus, add one cup of holly tone and mix throughly."

1 cup.. maybe in their world everyone has the same plant size.
person the came up with those instructions should be given a pink slip.

The recommendations that I follow suggest, "Start all 4 inch to 1 gallon plants in 2 to 5 gallon containers."

As for Espoma products, I'm not a fan, but then I've only tried the citrus blend. They seemed fine in the beginning but vigor, blooming and bearing dropped off over time. For container blueberries I've settled in long term with Dr Earth Acid Lovers blend. My blueberries can be seen at Blueberries: 2016.

I would use half a cup, a very nice product too. Dr Earth is too, but it's too expensive for me. I can't afford it.

1/2 cup in a gallon size pot? seems like a lot.

i sent an email directly to Espoma. i must be the only one in this forum who is using Holly Tone..

Dr Earth is probably a good fertlizer, but it has mycorrhizae fungi which from my research, i have discovered blueberries have no use for. so you're basically paying for a product where some of the ingredients have no effect on blueberries. mycorrhizae fungi is expensive addition which is probably why it's expensive to begin with.

https://bio-organics.com/specificplantstrees-endo-mycorrhizae-ecto-mycorrhizae/

blueberries are one of those "retarded" plants that do not respond to mycorrhizae. 95% of all other plants and vegetables respond well to mycorrhizae (ecto and endo).

If you shop around, you may be surprised. I understand that everyone has their own finance threshold, but $11 for a 4lb bag of Dr Earth Acid Lovers doesn't seem to be unreasonable.

Well you are incorrect about the mycorrhizae. Well sort of. The product does not have the right type. Also many bacteria would be beneficial.

http://www.actahort.org/books/525/525_11.htm

http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?SEQ_NO_115=145860

I use Holly-tone and it's not soluble you could use 2 cups and all would be fine.

I wouldn't do that but a half cup actually might not be enough. I wanted to error on the safe side. I guess a 1/4 cup would be safe. i was talking about mixing it in the soil. If putting on top maybe 1/4 cup would be better. It's really hard to burn anything with it. I put about 4 cups around my mature blueberries. I don't measure, just throw handfuls on the surface.

some of Holly tone is water soluble:
0.3% Ammonical Nitrogen
1.2% Water soluble Nitrogen
2.4% Water insoluble Nitrogen

i will probably use 1/4 cup since they are still a bit small.

i should have clarified, blueberries do make use of mycorrhizae, but the type is ericoid mycorrhizal. from what i gather the best way to obtain this beneficial fungi is from established blueberry plants. so if you already have other mature blueberry plants, basically you take soil from around the root mass and put that soil around another young blueberry transplant.

the Dr. Earth would work wonders for something like Strawberries which has the proper fungi for them.

Give bio stater a try. Espoma makes it. it's good for getting transplants to a great start.. even though it also has the soil bacteria colonies, it's not the proper mycorrhizae either.. but great for strawberries and has everything including fertilizer. its a bit expensive compared to the holly tone, but 8lb bag is good for 200 square feet and it's something you don't use on every application, just when transplanting to get them off to a early/fast start.. then switch to something like holly tone.

Walmart has the 27lb of holly tone for under 20 bucks.. great deal. just wished it had some sea organics, they got a bit greed/cheap and took them out of their products a few years ago and replaced them with cheaper chicken sh*t, but it's still a decent product for the price.

cheers.

I'm not so sure that BB are necessarily N hogs. Plants do become crackheads for water soluble N and will greedily accept it --even to their own detriment. Plus a lot of the N simply washes out, so it's hard to tell how much is being used by the plants. Dr Earth Acid Lover is 4-5-4, and I only use about 1-2 Tbls per month, per plant. They do well with water insoluble N from decaying organic matter, but I wouldn't call them hogs.

Well Mrclint you have had excellent results, so you may be right. I didn't know dose was so low with Dr Earth, that makes it affordable. I will try it next year. I'm all set for this year.

I have had great luck with ammonium sulfate and have no plans to stop using it though. I'm super happy with results. I like to use both a slow acting feed, and a quick boost.

Steve I will try it. Yes I like to use Neptune's Harvest products also. It does become expensive though. When I need a quick boost for other plants it works well.

Probably my favorite fertilizer though is soluble Dyna-Gro. It works so well, and ensures all trace minerals in forms easily taken up. Too me it is the very best, but to each his own. I only really use it on seedlings. Once bigger I switch to organic products. I also really like dynamite slow release. It lasts 9 months, they make an organic form too, but never tried it.

These products make it a lot more affordable for me as I have so many edibles. Like I said earlier I thought to switching to grains, but making sure plants have everything they need products like Dyna-Gro come in handy.

I thought of switching to all organics, and was heading that way, I'm just not impressed so far with results when I have tried it. So now I decided not to go that way. I know it can work, but I know products like Dyna-Gro not only feed but have a perfectly balanced NPK ratio, and that seems to really increase productivity. I have not been able to achieve this so far with organics, although I'm not totally given up on them just yet. I will try a few more techniques to see if I can get the production i expect.

The key to using solubles is to use low amounts. People tend to way overdo it. Small amounts are very effective. Sometimes too I need to change direction of a plant, like to boost flowering like yesterday, or increase vegetative growth, or slow it down. I just cannot do that with organics. Yet it's super easy with soluble products or lack of them to slow growth. I would miss having that much control. I can speed ripening of tomatoes before winter, this kind of stuff is essential, so I doubt I will totally stop using solubles. I can force plants into dormancy by cutting them off. At the end of the season I switch back to solubles so I have this control.

Yes, these are all tools in our kit. I'm not opposed to reading your plants and adding some fish emulsion or (here in Cali) some Gro-Power liquid fert. But I can never go back to high N water soluble (AS or Miracle-Gro) as a long term plan/solution. Too many sucking/chomping pests and leaf burn issues to deal with. Slow and steady wins the race for me. :)

i ended up potting them into 1 quart size containers. i think 1 gallon was too big and was worried about having too much moisture for too long. for 1 quart container i ended up putting about 1 and 1/2 tsp of the holly tone. a bit conservative just until i see some growth. they are in a mixture of 1/3 pine bark, 1/3 peat, and 1/3 oak leaf compost for a bit of organic/bacteria/micro-nutrients.

bigger pic: http://i.imgur.com/tBMtNu9.jpg