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How to Put Pine Needles on Your Blueberry Bushes
How to Put Pine Needles on Your Blueberry Bushes. Growing blueberries in your own yard can be a delicious experience as year after year plump and sweet fruits are produced in abundance. While mulching the base of your blueberry bushes serves to hold water in the soil and keep out thirsty weeds, using a pine needle mulch helps maintain a low pH,...
Growing blueberries in your own yard can be a delicious experience as year after year plump and sweet fruits are produced in abundance. While mulching the base of your blueberry bushes serves to hold water in the soil and keep out thirsty weeds, using a pine needle mulch helps maintain a low pH, acidic soil. As the appropriate levels of pH are reached, your blueberries will be better able to draw up nutrients to produce more berries.
Things You'll Need
Garden rake
Cultivator
Rake away any existing mulch as well as dropped leaves, stems or other debris from around the base of your blueberry bushes, working about a foot out all the way around. Discard these materials.
Break up lightly the upper inch of soil in the 1-foot radius around the bush using a cultivator. Don't dig deeply or you may hit the roots of your blueberry bush.
Spread a layer of pine needles over the loosened soil to cover it. Pile on the pine needles until the layer is 2 to 3 inches deep. This will take about 1 cubic foot of needles per plant.
Inspect under the surface of the pine needles every two months for signs of fungus or disease, such as black, white or yellow tinges in color, bad odors or a slimy appearance. Ideally you will only see a healthy breakdown of the rust-colored needles, which give off an earthy smell. Check monthly if your region has remained overly damp.
Rake away and discard any diseased or fungus-ridden needles. Allow the soil to dry for one to two days before applying a new layer of fresh needles.
Tips & Warnings
You can compost pine needles along with food scraps and yard clippings to provide an acidic compost material to use when planting blueberry bushes or substitute it as a mulch blend instead of straight pine needles.
