Grow Low-Chill, Heat-Tolerant Blueberries


Health nuts crave this “dark fruit,” cooks scatter them in salads and sweets, and, thanks to breeding advances, Southern California gardeners can grow these handsome productive plants on their patios. Blueberry shrubs are best grown in containers filled with the acidic soil mix they need to thrive. A suggested planting soil is a mix of 1/3 bark, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 acid-plant potting soil. Also be sure to pick a low-chill, heat-tolerant varieties like ‘Southmoon,’ ‘Sharp Blue,’ ‘Sunshine Blue,’ ‘Misty’ or other Southern Highbush hybrid. Planting two different varieties near each other will increase your harvest. One warning though: select only fertilizers with no nitrogen from nitrates. It’s fatal to these plants.