And the Rains Came

The timing was great. Blueberry holes were dug on Saturday. Saturday night the rain came and soaked the ground. Sunday morning the gardener got wet, but the blueberries were ecstatic. They are still smiling. “Mistakes were made”, however. That is a direct quote from either Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney. Yesterday’s Master Gardener® class was on planting trees.

I have always dug holes for planting, 3 times as large as the root-ball and filled in with enough compost and dirt to make the difference. The plant is set at the same level as it was in the pot. What the training said was. The hole should be much larger than the root-ball, but no deeper than the root-ball. The hole should be filled with dirt only. Many nurseries fill pots too high when they transplant, so extra dirt should be removed until the swelling at the beginning of the roots is revealed.

The nursery that grew the blueberries for the 4-H did not do that, so I guess no harm was done. The error that may cause problems was something else. This past fall, the Ph was tested and was 4.5 in the spots where the blueberries were planted. Now the Ph meter says 7. Sulfur was added and it is hoped that the meter was wrong.

David Segrest is an International REALTOR in Charlotte, NC. His email is david@segrestrealty.com , His webpage is http://davidsegrest.com , and his international real estate blog is http://dointernationalrealestate.blogspot.com/