Non productive garden - Need help

[Travis Linds]

I planted a bunch of low bush variety blueberries last year and 12+ commercial variety this year. However none are doing well. The ones I planted this year have already started loosing leaves and turning red. I think it may be soil pH and/or lack of fertilizer. Any suggestions? I was going to add some aged manure as a mulch but was wondering if I am better to wait until spring now? Same with my pepper plants - they performed very poorly. And the slugs are killing me. My urban garden has not been very productive. Any help would be appreciated.

[David Pike]

Hmmm, my first thoughts are:

Blueberries need plenty of water to do well. A deep watering 1x per week during the dry spells would help them grow and make berries bigger and juicier. I think they also like slightly acid soil, which we naturally have, some aged manure and wood chips might be a good idea.

Pepper plants need heat, all they can get. I grew mine in a cloche with both ends open, and they are loaded. They can go longer than other plants without a lot of water, (being so heat tolerant) so I only watered them every week to two weeks even during the long hot days of summer. I think they do best in BIG pots too, like 5+ gallon pots, pepper plants can get over 4 feet tall if you give them enough root space.

[Shannon Maris]

Do not put manure on blueberries. Blueberries need high acid soil, plants with lots of peat moss!!
Alfalfa seed meal is a high acid nitrogen additive, but you don't want to add fertilizer now since they are going dormant for the winter.

This year was brutal with the heat so unless you were constantly watering, or had a soaker hose on them chances are if they were transplanted this Spring with a small root ball and a lot of leaf and branches they probably were struggling with transplant shock doubled with the heat stress/dehydration. I ended up pruning back about 1/2 of the branches of some large blueberries in an attempt to keep from losing them completely since water was not available on site and their root ball not large enough to supply the needs of what was above ground.

My own garden did poorly until the weather cooled down and we had a couple soaker rains. I didn't water nearly enough or often enough for the kind of heat we had. All depends on the soil too. One bed of mine had purchased top soil with a high sand content so water would run right thru the soil, so soaking it did little good. A couple others I have had a straw mulch and compost enhanced native soil and those held water much longer.

In contrast the last couple weeks i planted winter greens and other seeds- they are healthy and thriving... due to cooler, moist weather. So keep trying!!

Slugs.... use Sluggo (non-toxic) or copper strips, or hand pick at night or after a rain.

Maybe other veteran blueberry growers can weigh in too.....

[Travis Linds]

thank you all very much for your input. I now suspect I did not water enough, especially for a transplant year. I will go ahead and send off a sample of my soil to testing and get a game plan together for fertilizing in the spring. Thanks for stopping me from using manure. I have some compost that I could use next year perhaps with some acid adding stuff, depending on my soil conditions. And the peppers likely did not get enough sun, my yard is not the sunnest. One thing that did do great was my purple kale, fennel and transplanted grapes (large, 10 year old vines).