Another blueberry plant question(sorry)

[Dollarbill300]

Hello everyone. I see that some people are asking questions about these plants. I apologize upfront for the redundancy of my post. Here is my situation.

I am giving 2 blueberry plants to my goddaughter this Sunday for her 12th birthday. She has been asking for these plants for a couple of years now, so I think she will be very surprised and very happy. I was told to buy 2 different varieties of these plants. The 2 I got are Tifblue and Climax. The plants will be planted in the Southwest Charlotte area. My questions are about planting and fertilizing. I have read as much as I can find about growing these plants. I am a little confused about what soil to use after I dig a hole about 2.5 feet in diameter and about 1 foot deep. I was going to use peat moss and compost or composted cow manure(black kow). Does anyone have any recommendations on what I should use? For fertilizer I was going to tell my brother to get blood meal and cottonseed meal. I was going to put a little bit of that in the hole while I am planting it in the ground. Does anyone have any recommendations about the ferts and when to apply them? I was also going to tell my brother to get pine bark mulch to layer around the top to help keep the soil moist. Because this is a gift for my goddaughter, I want to make sure this goes well, she loves blueberries. Thanks for the help in advance.

 

[Fernsdaddy]

There no reason to be sorry, you can't learn if you don't ask. Two different varieties will help give you better fruit so they say I only grow kind and still get more berries than I can eat, I use composted cow manure when I plant about a cup for each plant and the in the spring I top dress them with a cup or so of composted cow manure.This is the only time I feed them all season.mulching them is fine as long as the roots don't stay wet to long, damp soil is fine they don't like wet feet.

 

[Grizz299]

About Cross Fertilization: IT IS NECESSARY and if the poster feels he is getting high yields, cross fertilization should double it.
Sex , and I almost hate telling you this, is merely a survival technique. Mix the chromosomes and get varied Offspring that allows nature to select the fittest for your microenvironment . Man has selected the fittest and then he propagates asexually by cloning. Every blue crop ( or red delicious apple tree) in your field is genetically identical - even as they stand as individual plants. Plants don't want to mate with themselves, it would destroy the principle of varied offspring. Therefore 5 Blu-ray plants + 5 blue crop plants will outproduce 10 Blu-ray or 10 blue crop plants.
BTW, cross fertilization with blueberries is accomplished by the large bumble bee and not as much by the smaller honey bee. I've never understood that, since the blueberry plant is indigenous and the Bumblebee is not native to North America.