How to grow blueberries from seeds at home, planting and care rules
Blueberries are rich in vitamins and microelements, and are especially useful for eyesight. Excellent taste with low calorie content has become a godsend for nutritionists; blueberry jam, muffins and blueberry rolls are popular with sweet tooths all over the world. Another berry has long been used in folk medicine. Information on how to grow blueberries from seeds in a summer cottage will certainly come in handy for novice summer residents.
Advantages and disadvantages of growing from seeds
Garden blueberries are easy to grow from seeds, and even frozen berries can be used for this. Of course, this is a complicated matter, but fruit-bearing bushes will certainly delight gardeners.
Planting blueberry seeds has several benefits:
- you can use the seeds of frozen blueberries purchased in the supermarket;
- American varieties of tall blueberries, the seeds of which can be purchased from us, practically do not get sick and are not attacked by pests;
- garden varieties grown from seeds give a good harvest and do not differ in chemical composition from their “wild” relatives.
The disadvantages of this reproduction are:
- if the seeds are taken from a forest berry, they will not take root in the garden;
- even with good care, the seeds do not sprout together, they grow slowly;
- planted in open ground in the second year after germination.
For good growth, the bushes need light acidic soil, this is a prerequisite, otherwise the plantings will not take root.
Choosing a blueberry variety
When choosing seeds for planting in the country, you should know that the bushes of wild berries are undersized, they do not grow more than 50-80 centimeters.
Garden berry bushes can be short, medium and tall.
- Low grades include: Sunrise, Erliblu, Kovil.
- Mid-sized are: Jersey, Herbert, Nelson.
- High, reaching 2 meters, varieties: North Blue, Northland, Patriot, Bluestar 701, Toro.
All varieties tolerate frost well and are suitable for the Russian climate.
Seed preparation for sowing
If the seeds for planting are selected independently, it is better to take the largest frozen blueberries purchased at the supermarket. Freezing is essentially a stratification for seeds.
Seeds purchased from trusted sellers are fully prepared for sowing. The berries should be kneaded well and filled with water. The best seeds, which are the heaviest, will sink to the bottom. The water must be drained several times to get rid of the berry pulp.
Seeds can be spread on filter paper for drying, and then tear off the required amount of planting material and place in the ground along with the paper.They are very small; if you don't want to use paper, you can use a toothpick for planting.
In this case, the seeds are sown in a pot or special container. Seedlings emerge 2-3 weeks after sowing the seeds. Growing blueberries from seeds in a pot is time-consuming, but very fun.
The second way to plant a plant on a plot with seeds: several fresh blueberries are buried in a selected place in the garden.
In this case, it is difficult to expect the emergence of strong, friendly shoots next year, but since the method is very simple, it makes sense to try, especially since blueberry bushes are a decoration of the landscape.
Landing dates
Blueberry seeds are planted in a pot in the fall. After the emergence of seedlings, the container with the plant is taken out into a bright and cool room (a closed veranda or a summer kitchen is suitable) with a temperature of + 5-8 ° C. In the spring, the pots with the plant are taken out into the air, and the home blueberry bush is planted in the open ground with the onset of autumn or next spring.
Important: blueberries grow extremely slowly; the first year after planting, the plant must be covered for the winter with sawdust, spruce branches or a special cloth.
She begins to bear fruit in 3 years, gives good yields for 20-30 years.
Substrate preparation and sowing
For planting, take equal parts of peat, river sand and fallen needles. The berry grows only on light acidic soils. PH of soil - 3.8-5. The plant needs a slightly shaded environment. Seeds should not be planted deeply, plants love moisture, but cannot stand overflow. To keep the soil acidic, it is necessary to water the soil with acidified water once a month (use acetic or citric acid).
If you cannot prepare the soil yourself, you can use ready-made soil for azaleas, it is sour and suitable for blueberries. The container with seeds is covered with a film, which is periodically removed to ventilate the seedlings, and the soil is moistened with a spray bottle.
Transfer to a permanent place
For planting berry bushes, holes are dug at a distance of at least a meter from each other, 60 centimeters in diameter and about 80 centimeters deep.
At the bottom of the finished hole, gravel or expanded clay is placed as a drainage layer. Next comes a layer of fallen needles, and then a mixture of sand, soil and peat. Then the soil is watered and allowed to settle. The plant should be planted in the hole along with the soil from the pot; it does not need to be shaken off from the roots. The soil is compacted. The root neck should be covered, the plant is watered abundantly, adding a bucket of water to each bush.
When planting in autumn, the plant must be covered for the winter, since in our latitudes it does not have time to adapt to new conditions and get stronger.
Important: the plant does not tolerate organic fertilizers.
Blueberries should not be planted in the shade, they will not bear fruit, only slightly shaded areas are best for them.
Blueberry care
The plant is capricious, therefore it requires careful care, weeding, watering, and regular acidification of the soil.
Watering, weeding, mulching
The soil under the blueberry bushes should be slightly damp; excess moisture leads to diseases and death of the plant.
The plantings are periodically weeded, the soil under the bushes is mulched with sawdust or needles. It is necessary to weed the bushes carefully, the roots of blueberries are located close to the soil surface, they are easily damaged when loosening the soil or removing weeds.
Fertilization
With low acidity of the soil, citric or acetic acid must be added to the soil. The plant needs mineral fertilizers. Azofoska, complex potassium-phosphorus compositions are used. The first time fertilization is applied in early spring, then at the end of May, the last time is fertilized in the first decade of July.Once every 3-4 years, the plants can be fed with compost or peat chips. When the plant suffers from a lack of fertilizers, the yield decreases, the berries and leaves become smaller.
Pruning bushes
Sanitary pruning of bushes is performed from 3-4 years. Remove damaged, dried branches, get rid of lateral shoots.
Ripe berries are kept fresh and frozen for a long time, preserving the taste and nutrients that it is rich in. Garden blueberries are completely identical to forest blueberries in their properties, so more and more gardeners tend to grow them in their own summer cottage.
