Red Blueberry Plant Leaves

[amebum]

Hi everyone!
I am a complete newbie to growing my own fruit and veg, waiting for my own allotment but for the time being started with raspberry, blackberry and blueberry in my garden.

The raspberry and blackberry are fine, however the blueberry's have started to get red leaves, which I have now looked up and have found is down to the PH level of the soil (d'oh!)
after more research I've sent my other half to go get some ericaceous soil and some pots and i'm going to plant them back into the pots.

So... am I doing the right thing? and will the leaves go back green or have they completely had it? I bought the plants flowering already, so guessing I'll have no fruit this year =(

Thank you for help in advance

[northepaul]

Blueberries are quite tough - the sooner you can get it into ericaceous soil the better. You dont say how big the plants are so I assume they are quite small? Give them some food ( rhododendrum is good) and some rain water and new soil (acidic) and fingers crossed they'll come back, though probably not properly until next year.
A mulch of pine needles, or pine sawings is always welcome too

[amebum]

they have a couple stalks of leaves each and a couple stalks with flowers on each. so quite small still.

[timethatthetaleweretold]

An Iron Deficiency causes blueberry leaves to go yellow/bronze while the main veins remain green.

A Magnesium deficiency turns blueberry leaves yellow/red.

The colour patterns are very specific according to what element is deficient.

details here:
Fertilizing Blueberries E-2011


But you probably don't need to worry about that stuff.
From what I understand, the ericacious soil will allow the plant to absorb the nutrients it has been lacking.
But you could also add them in a feed at some point which might help them go green again more quickly.

[amebum]

thanks for that, just have another question if anyone can help... i've found from my research that rainwater is best to use to water and well, we've had no rain for at least a week, is there anything else I can use? bottled water? I live in a very hardwater area so lots of lime!

[gojiberry]

I am lucky in that I can get away with tap water. I have never had to descale a kettle in the twenty years I have lived here. I think bottled water should be alright, I also think that boiling the water reduces the amount of lime but not sure by how much. Is there a river or stream near by that you could get water from.

Ian