Bamboo, thanks very much for the advice, but I wouldn't say I even have a problem to correct. I'm mainly just wanting to just deepen my understanding, particularly of non-purchased options for soil acidification, and in any case, dollar costs really aren't my concern at all. Not to hijack my own thread and make it too much about my own personal circumstances (as opposed to the more general questions), but I'm very satisfied with how my rabbiteyes are doing, and if the pH isn't in the ideal range for them, it's very close, and so long as they keep performing as well as they have been I probably won't even bother to check. I will probably check before I buy any more highbush plants. (I did receive two northern highbush plants randomly several years ago, and they didn't survive, but a number of factors, including transplanting due to a move, could have played into that.) Also, although I watered a fair bit the first year or two, I don't hardly water my blueberries at all any more. I may have only watered them two or three times this past year (albeit an overall wet growing season.) If bicarbonates were a problem, I could easily use rainwater for all my blueberry watering, but as little as I've been watering I don't know if it would even matter. What about coffee grounds, though, even if not for the purpose of acidification? Would it be good just to put them around the plants like mulch? Can I overdo it?

I just planted some blueberry plants. Ive never tested my soil, but every single house in the entire area have hydrengea, and none of them are blue... Either way, just to be sure, I planted them in a 2:1 ration of peat to soil. I then took a liter of coffee grounds, ans dpread them around the plant about a foot away. I then Put 2 inches of pine needles my neighbor gave me ( they dont use anything nasty at all, we call them the "hippies".)and worked them both into the soil lightly. I then covered the area with a thin layer of news paper, and then multched with leaves/pine needles. My logic was that the peat will only make the ph acidic, where I placed it, and isnt really long term. So by the time its effects are gone, the layers of compost/leaves/pine needles will already be acidifying the soil. Since ive read blueberries like really acid soil, I wasnt too paranoid about over acidifying the soil. THey seem to love it. ITs almsot time for more coffee grounds, seeing as we are getting tons of rain. If you have the room, you might want to plant some pine trees near or around your blue berries, and dont bother raking up the needles. If anything spread them around. How can you get more organic then pine needles from trees that are already there?

Here's some info from Wiki: Fertilizers Urine has applications in gardening and agriculture as a fertilizer. Gardeners often recommend a dilution of 10-20 parts water to one of urine for application to pot plants and flower beds during the growing season; pure urine can chemically burn the roots of some species. Urine typically contains more than 50% of the nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium content of whole sewage, and is widely considered as good as or better than commercially-available chemical fertilisers or stabilised sludge from sewage plants. Urine is also used in composting to increase the nitrogen content of the mulch, accelerating the composting process and increasing its final nutrient values. Urine is also being actively considered as a fertilizer for use in food-crop agriculture in developed countries. Studies into its feasibility and safety usually indicate that it is an acceptable alternative to chemical fertilisers and stabilised sludge. However, the technology to implement its use on a large scale has not been developed, and is considered too expensive. There are also concerns over its safety regarding the potential for transmitting infectious disease and refluxing xenobiotic compounds (associated with toilet-cleaning products and prescribed drugs expelled in urine) in the human food chain. Proponents of adopting urine for this use usually claim the risks to be negligible or acceptable, and point out that sewage causes more environmental problems when it is treated and disposed of compared with when it is used as a resource. Critics generally agree that more research is needed into how the resource is to be collected, processed and handled. A few people use urine as a crop fertilizer. These include organic farming cooperatives and eco-villages where special urine-diverting toilets with collecting tanks are installed. Many of these also employ concepts such as greywater irrigation and the composting of fecal matter. Many are the subject on ongoing feasibility studies sanctioned by governments and private organisations. These people generally reject safety concerns over its use on food crops provided that it is used with common sense. For example, application to fruit trees is considered safer than to bushes and especially root crops. It is also considered sensible to cease application at a safe interval before harvesting. However, the use of urine for this purpose is even rarer than its use on ornamental gardens. In developing countries, the application of pure urine to crops is also rare. However, whole, untreated sewage, termed night soil, is often applied to crops and is considered essential. It is worth noting that this practice is not new and has been applied, along with crop rotation schemes, for thousands of years. In Japan, urine used to be sold to farmers who would process it into fertilizers.

I had a similar problem with discolored leaves on pansy plants and some other bushes also such as Ternstroemia japonica 'Burnished Gold' . I thought it could be PH, I posted about it a lot. I finally decided it was a fungal problem as using a fungicide regularly, keeps it from coming back. But if you want to eat the berries you should not spray it. It looks like the older leaves and not the younger leaves have turned, and that could be fungus. You could maybe trim off the discolored leaves, and hope for new growth. It does not look well, but I don't know blue berries. The water is san Francisco is very alkaline and they are not recommended. In fact, no one grows them here, we can grow black berries.