Blue Gold

I'm pretty sure my favorite fruit is the blueberry.

I grew up following behind my mother and grandmother, a bucket strung around my neck.  I'm sure that early on, I would eat more than went into my bucket, just like in the book Blueberries for Sal.  We picked at my Great Uncle John's farm which his family still owns so our family still has access to.  As I got older and especially as I started thinking about growing our own food, my goal shifted and I filled those buckets as fast and as full as I could whenever I had the chance.  I wrote about one of our trips there in this post.

His farm is out of state, so even though there are more than enough blueberries for us to have our fill, perfectly timing a weekend to go pick is tough and we feel badly relying on nearby family to pick for us.

I also feel badly because my very last quart of frozen blueberries is almost empty.

When we first moved to this house, we haphazardly bought a few blueberry plants and plopped them into the ground.  We crossed our fingers hoping that we had good blueberry soil.  Meanwhile, the blueberry plants died a quick and, hopefully, painless death.

Years later, I did  some research and started a notebook on all that starting a small pick-your-own blueberry patch would entail.  One of our side yards was the target planting spot.  Maps were drawn up, the shade was charted, and I got pregnant with Miriam.  So much for those plans.  Morning sickness, Jamey in school, and everything else caused us to put those plans on the back burner.

This winter I told Jamey I wanted to try again (for blueberries) and asked for some for my birthday.  It's not until June, but early spring planting is the way to go.  This past weekend, we planted the majority of the bushes he bought for me.  I have the sore muscles to prove it.  These will be for us, but hopefully we'll one day have enough to share with friends and neighbors.

I'm going to show you what we did.  While we did have our homework done this time, everyone's soil is different, so I'm not going to go into detailed specifics.  We're not successful blueberry growers yet!  So, if you're interested in planting blueberries do your own research specific to your own soil and region.

We decided to plant them at the upper end of our sunflower patch where they would receive full sun.  This spot is also right outside our kitchen windows, so I can keep a close eye on the weeds, birds, and children picking.  We already had two sweet cherry trees planted at that end, so one row has both cherries and blueberries.  The cherry trees might provide some shade, but it will be minimal since these are fruit trees that  we intend to keep well-pruned for ample production.

Blueberries need special attention for the following reasons:

1) They are particular about their soil, specifically the acidity level.  Have your soil tested and determine if you need to manipulate the soil to increase it's acidity (like we did).

2) They don't like wet feet.  By this I mean they need proper drainage.  Planting them on slight mounds and mixing in plenty of organic matter (like peat) will help with this.

3) Their roots are shallow, so they don't like to dry out.

4) They like full sun.

Our attempt is shown below.

Our sunflower patch is a patchy mess of bare ground and grass.  You can tell where the upper end of it is because of the two cherry trees.

Here Jamey is tilling the all-blueberry row.  He found very old (and falling apart) discarded railroad ties to help keep out the weeds and help hold the additional soil/peat that those rows will contain.  You can see Sam in the red shirt by his bike killing ants by lighting them on fire with a magnifying glass.  He's a boy.

Here the railroad ties have been dug homes and are in place.  I dug the holes for the blueberry bushes in this row.  The holes are five feet apart and the row is about three feet wide.

This next photograph shows Jamey tilling up the row with the cherry trees.

I prepared the holes and soil and planted those little beauties with Sam, Sadie and Miriam helping.

We then mulched them with several inches of untreated mulch.  We ran out of railroad ties.  If anyone local knows where we can score some more super-old ones for free, we'd really appreciate it.  We still have three bushes that we didn't have room for, so they will be planted along the work shop (the white building to the right).  It's shaded in the early morning, but receives intense afternoon sun (the white wall will help reflect it, too).

We planted at least four varieties to ensure pollination and chose bushes of different ages, anywhere between one and four-year-old plants, for a total of 16 bushes.  According to one source, each mature bush can produce as many as a gallon or more blueberries each year.  I'm not counting on having it that good.  Even half of that would make me very, very happy.

Our fingers are crossed once again!  If you grow blueberries, what tips do you have for us?  What do you do for them year to year?  How many bushes do you have and what is their yield?  Do you love them as much as I do (this may be a trick question because I'm pretty sure I love them best)? :-)

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