Mervington wrote:
Jeff Taylor Wrote:
Rupert (W.Yorkshire) wrote:
-
The residual chlorine in the tap water should not cause a problem
with

Blueberries or AFAIK with any other plants.
If your tap water is hard (calcium and magnesium minerals) then it is

advisable to use soft water (rain water)--if you haven't got enough
then I
can send you some:-)

-

I've had a couple of blueberry plants growing in 15-inch containers
for

about 8 years now.
Can't remember the variety now unfortunately but they're
self-fertile. They were planted in ericaceous compost but have only
ever been watered

straight from the hose (apart from the rain!)
We do have soft water here though.
Every year I've had a huge crop.

Note to self: must give them some ericaceous feed this year :-)

Jeff
NE England

Thanks Jeff for this.

We are in Wensleydale, but our water is not soft. We certainly get
scale deposits in the kettle!

Perhaps I should ask a chemist whether soaking sulphur chips in
containers of water will have the desired effect, but I don't know a
chemist...................

Sulphur's not water-soluble, so that wouldn't help. It's used to change
the pH of soil by a natural reaction, but that's getting very technical.
For watering, I imagine the cheapest source of acid is probably the
gallon cans of non-brewed condiment vinegar substitute you can get from
some greengrocers at pickled onion time*, or Tesco "Value" vinegar. It
should be possible to find out experimentally how much of this stuff you
need to mix into your particular tap water to get a neutral reaction on
indicator paper.

I don't know if the chelated iron you get for rhododendrons would work
for blueberries: it will correct iron deficiency, but I don't know how
important other locked-up nutrients are.

(I don't understand this fashion for blueberries, though: they always
taste like artificial flavouring to me. Not a patch on blackberries or
white currants.)

*Don't pickle onions in it: it's foul!

--
Mike.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com