Grow Your Own Magazine

Can someone offer any advice. I have two four year old blueberry bushes which produced wonderfully last year and seemed to be ready to do the same this year. When two weeks ago a few of the leaves went yellow. Now my buds have all dried up and the leaves have dropped off. One was okay at first now it is following suit.

I have seen Ants in the soil could it be them and what can I do?

try repoting it if its in a pot into a bigger pot this may also get rid of some ants, ensure you are watering with rain water where possiable and using and eriacious fertiler for feed (i also add liquid grow more to mine as well) mine like being in compost and never use manure for blueberries they cant tolerate it. if you followed the above they could have got scortched, due to raining then hot sun next day as this happened to my nectrine tree if so nothing you can do this year other than prune, water, feed and wait for next as it should recover, but you will have lost this years fruit. they do like partial shade and we have had more sun than last year so they may need moving for this reason. mine are in partial shade and mine are fine so far, they had to have a little tap water a couple of weeks ago when i ran out of rain water but it wasnt much but there back on the rain water now. a good soaking may also kill a few ants, as they will eat the fruit when it comes if you dont get rid of them hope this helps some.

Ants are not good, they give off an acid that kills virtually all plants and stops seeds from germinating. (Oxalic acid?) That's why all the local antheaps in the woods here are free of the otherwise incredibly common blaeberry and cranberry bushes.
I think they also like to have special fungi or bacteria in the soil they grow in - that's one of the reasons they are a bit hit or miss, the soil has to be just right.

My blueberries are in full sun and I don't get any problems with this. They are watered with rainwater when I have this available, but otherwise I use tap water which I have allowed to stand for a couple of days. (I keep a 25 ltr container filled up as a reserve. I was told that allowing the water to stand gets rid of excess chlorine, etc. but I don't know how true this is.) In one of my gardening books the emphasis was on "don't let them dry out - use tap water if necessary". I feed occasionally with Gem Sulphate of Iron.

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Thanks I will give the repotting a try. I think they may have got scorched when we were on holiday last week and dry. I had a look this morning and I have a couple of berries coming through and some new leaves.

if they are getting scorched a little more shady spot may help too! im getting exited about mine as i have quite a lot of fruit and 4 varieties to sample, the winner i will buy another bush off.