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Blueberries
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 |
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