How to Fertilize Blueberries With Cottonseed Meal

Cottonseed meal is made by crushing cottonseed kernels and is used as animal and plant food. Each application continuously releases nutrients to the soil for about four months, providing nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium as well as trace minerals. That alone makes cottonseed meal an ideal blueberry fertilizer. But this plant food is also acidic, and it helps to maintain the soil at a low pH level to suit blueberry's requirements. Besides, if you verify first that the cottonseed meal doesn't derive from plants treated with synthetic chemicals, you can also use it in organic blueberry production.

Shovel
1 cup cottonseed meal
Water
Acidic organic mulch
¼ lb. cottonseed meal per square yard

Instructions

- 1
  Dig a hole for your blueberry bush. Mix the topsoil you removed from the hole with 1 cup of cottonseed meal.
- 2
  Plant the blueberry bush and back fill it with the topsoil-cottonseed-meal mixture. Water the shrub to the root zone.
- 3
  Measure enough organic mulch material to form a 2-inch-deep ring around each of your blueberry plants. Use pine needles, peat moss, dead oak leaves or other matter that doesn't raise soil pH.
- 4
  Measure ¼ lb. of cottonseed meal for each square yard occupied by a blueberry bush. Mix it with the mulch you measured out in Step 3. Mulch each blueberry plant with this mixture late winter to early spring. Mulching blueberries provides fertilization without injuring their shallow roots by deep cultivation.

Winter Care for Patio Blueberries

Organic Blueberry Bushes

Growing Blueberries