Back to Project Blueberry: The deets

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Hubs and I have a 3 step plan for growing blueberries that we will implement this year for the 2013 season. 2013 will be our 5th season and 5th attempt at growing blueberries. The irony is that the Highbush Blueberry is native to our area and should be a piece of cake, right? Not so fast…

  1. Select sunny spot for blueberry patch. Seems obvious, I know, but we made a common mistake in year 1 of our new home and garden. We didn’t observe the amount of light in different areas of the garden, and how it changes during the season. We were also optimistic when the plant tags read ‘partial sun to full sun.’ So, after 2 different garden locations, we are planning for a spot with full sun and maximum sun exposure.
  2. Use optimal soil and measure pH. Our first year we planted the blueberries in the as-is reddish clay soil. We didn’t enrich it with compost or peat moss, or anything, and we didn’t measure the pH of the soil, which we deemed too fussy as blueberries are natives. Well, we should have and will do this next year.
  3. Protect your investment. We will use netting and make it look pretty like our neighbors (see picture below). This year’s blueberry bushes were planted in a somewhat sunny spot in decent soil, but left unprotected.

Additional tips and suggestions welcome…

Protect your investment: Install blueberry netting to protect them from predators

More on Growing Blueberries – Hopefully NOT for the Birds

This is my favorite time of year for fruit. Blueberries are just coming into season and local peaches and various stone fruit are all in abundance in the northeast. Yes, we can purchase these year-round, but the local peaches, plums, nectarines all taste so much better than the ones that come out of cold storage. And blueberries can be downright watery at other times of the year, too. So, knowing they are local and seasonal makes me feel better on a morale level and smug on an intellectual level. But let’s be honest, I just prefer the taste.

Local Peaches Purchased July 26, 2012

I visited a greenmarket this morning and the farm stand had plums in every color under the sun – from varying shades of the traditional purple, to yellow to red to pink.  These 2 lonely fellows are all that remain from 2 pounds of mixed plums and peaches purchased this morning,. Here they are in all their glory – small, uneven in shape and even a little bruised. As you can see, they look nothing like the perfect specimens (in appearance only!) available year-round at the market, and thankfully don’t resemble them in taste either. Yum!

So, let’s talk about growing blueberries. Hubs and I have made 4 attempts so far in 4 years to grow blueberries on our own. And 4 failures. Kinda sad for a bush and fruit that are native to our region, don’t you think?  We were lulled into thinking they didn’t need much sun because they’re natives (wrong), we were careless in the soil we planted them in, and most recently, we had signs of success, but then failed to protect. Back in May we had little green berries growing beautifully on our 2 humble bushes. But they proved to be irresistible for the bird population and were gone before they had a chance to turn from green to red to pink to blue. Foiled again. But now we’ve got a 3 step plan and gosh darnit, 2013 will be our year for backyard blueberries. I hope…

I snapped this picture at the 2012 New Marlborough Garden tour last weekend. The Gays live in New Marlborough and have a beautiful property in the foothills of East Mountain State Forest, which they kindly opened up to neighbors during the tour. They’ve created a delightful garden in a wooded setting featuring shade-loving plants, a stone pond loaded with Koi goldfish and many stone sculptures crafted from stones on their property. I loved exploring their veggie patch and came across a creative way to protect blueberries pictured below. You must put up netting to keep away the birds, and this can often be unsightly. Here they’ve created tents using skinny tree branches and it looks almost natural. Ingenious and aesthetically pleasing. So, Hubs will be trying this next year (step 3 of Project Blueberry). I’ll write about steps 1 & 2 later. Non-linear, I know.

Blueberry bushes under netting at the Gays’ garden in New Marlborough, MA