The journey toward blueberries

This is a loooong post, so grab a cup of tea and follow our journey toward blueberries.

Last year, you might recall I went on a hunt for blueberry bushes. They were one of the first things I wanted to get established here in our new home, but there was a regional shortage at the time and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find enough.

Fortunately, from a variety of sources, I was able to obtain the bushes I wanted: 15 Chandlers, six Toros, three Patriots, and five Spartans (originally six, but one died), for a total of 29 bushes.

For the longest time, these bushes remained in pots on the porch (where they were protected from deer) while we figured out where to plant them and how best to protect them.

We had also purchased four peach trees, and were faced with a similar question: Where to plant them and how to protect them.

A major consideration around here is deer pressure. We have deer everywhere. When we finally get our raised-bed garden installed, we plan to have 10-foot-high fencing around it, but last year we had nothing established by way of infrastructure to protect the bushes, and of course we couldn’t delay too long in getting the berries into the ground.

So after much deliberation, we decided on an unorthodox solution. (Hmm. It seems most of our solutions are unorthodox.)

We have a strip of lawn in front of the house, parallel to the driveway. We’re limited in what we can do on this spot, because a portion is part of the drain field for our septic system. Fortunately we are able to tell (from the unevenness of the ground) where the drain field ends, and we decided to put the blueberries and peaches there.

Don laid everything out in a schematic.

We assembled the early tools we needed: stakes, tape measures, marking string, and spray paint.

We staked out where we were going to drill holes with the tractor auger, both for planting blueberries and peach trees, but also for constructing an enclosure to protect everything from the deer.

Measuring and marking.

Don made a spacer board to mark where to auger holes for blueberries, to keep things fairly even.

The spray paint indicates where the holes will get augered.

Once all the preliminary layout was done, it was time to begin the enclosure to protect against deer. We had already salvaged some pressure-treated poles.

These poles were a lucky (and free) find. Hard to beat that price. We decided they would become the uprights to hold fencing in place for the blueberries and peach trees.

We laid out the space where we wanted to place the poles, and augered holes using the tractor auger.

Then he augered the holes to plant the blueberries.

But building the protective enclosure was more important than planting at this point, so Don focused on getting the poles into the ground.

First he made a quick jig to hold the poles in place.

He measured and marked two inches from the ends of each pole.

Then, using a paddle bit, he drilled holes.

Then we set the poles upright in the ground, with the drilled holes at top.

We used salvaged well pipes to link the poles together. Well pipes are one of the homesteader’s best friends. They’re often free, they’re 21 feet long, and they can be threaded together. We threaded some of the pipes through the holes in the poles. (That’s our internet satellite dish on the right.)

We made sure the poles were level.

Tamping the poles in place.

We could thread the well pipes together to make the lengths we wanted. Plumber’s wrenches helped.

(So did a little grease.)

The result was a series of poles linked by metal rods.

(If all this seems very convoluted and mysterious, bear with us. There’s a method to our madness.)

We only put in about half the poles and pipe we wanted to create the enclosure, just enough to plant the blueberries. But to get ready to plant the peaches, we brought in a neighbor who has a small Bobcat trackhoe to dig us some holes.

Here’s one of the holes.

To the pile of excavated dirt, we added sand to break up the heavy clay.

Don churned together the dirt and sand using the rototiller attachment on the tractor.

Once it was all mixed together, he backfilled the hole with the dirt/sand mixture. These will be our peach-tree planting spots. We then continued constructing the line of upright poles and pipes to the end of this line, to enclose the spots we’ll plant the trees.

To make the enclosure sturdy, however, we needed to brace the upright poles. To do this, Don cut pieces of well pipe at an angle to use as braces. He started with a jig setup.

This is the end of the well pipe he’ll be cutting with a metal-cutting wheel.

Here’s his metal-cutting wheel.

It’s a pity the photo barely captures the cascade of sparks that went flying every time he made a cut. It was quite dramatic.

Once he had all the pipe cut to length, he drilled a hole in the long end of the angle, about an inch from the tip.

(Close-up of the drilled hole, complete with metal shavings.)

Each upright wooden pole got two metal braces screwed into it.

This is the (still incomplete) result. The angled braces serve two purposes: they brace the pole, but they also act as a support for the siding.

For the siding, we used cattle panels (some people call these hog panels).

These were leaned up against the angled pipes.

Finally it was time to actually plant the blueberries. We carefully prepped the holes with a generous amount of peat moss, which gives acid-loving blueberries a boost.

I brought all the blueberries down from the deck…

…and organized them according to variety.

Don even made a small chart showing what was planted where.

In the ground.

Then I laid out some weed cloth and started fitting it around the blueberry plants.

Crucially, however, I did not anchor the weed cloth with gravel. Big mistake! We didn’t have any gravel at the time, and we naïvely assumed the weed cloth would be sufficient to, well, block the weeds. (It wasn’t.)

To complete the enclosure, we used sturdy deer netting.

This we cut to length and draped over the pipe at the apex of the structure.

This is what the enclosure looks like. The cattle panels can drop down for access to the berries, and the angled cattle panels combined with the netting keep the deer from even trying to get in. (Deer don’t like to mess with angles.) The height at the apex is high enough that we can walk inside without banging our heads, though admittedly this is because we are a family of hobbits.

But this is where things stalled. Big-time. The temperatures were getting roastingly hot by this point – last summer wasn’t much more than a blur of heat that seemed to last for months – and early mornings were being used for other projects. As a result, only 12 of the blueberry plants got any weed cloth at all, and what was there wasn’t anchored with gravel and therefore didn’t do much good.

Bottom line, the blueberries got ignored. Make no mistake, I watered them, but did nothing more for a full year.

This last spring, we were dealing with Don’s health situation. Once he was recuperated, he was able to move some gravel for me, and I became determined to mend the mess I’d made with the neglected blueberries last year. The bushes were overwhelmed with weeds and grasses to the point of embarrassment. I mean, look at this!

It’s hard to even spot the poor overwhelmed berry bushes.

So I got busy doing what I should have done last year, cursing myself for leaving it so long and thus multiplying the amount of work required. (Ben Franklin said it well: A stitch in time saves nine.)

I started at the end of the line where I had ineffectually laid down that length of weed cloth last summer. I pulled off the cloth and started hand-pulling the grasses and weeds down to bare dirt. The weed cloth did do one thing – it kept the ground softer and made it easier to pull everything out. Still, it was laborious work.

Don had purchased a section of the biggest PVC pipe he could find, then sawed it into chunks to use as collars.

As I cleared the ground around each bush, I tucked weed cloth around the plant base, then fitted the collar and snugged it down.

Relatively speaking, this first section was easy. Soon I had the area paved with weed cloth and graveled.

Then I had to tackle the much longer section that had never had weed cloth over it. The bushes were more stunted here, simply from having sunlight blocked by the tall grasses.

This was much more time-consuming. Don started by weed-whacking what he could, but he had to be very slow and careful not to accidentally hit a bush. (He never did.) That took care of the tallest grasses. After that, I armed myself with knee pads and an electric trimmer and got to work.

I shaved – literally shaved – the grasses down to the ground using the electric trimmer. The blueberry bushes themselves didn’t have many weeds growing in the holes where we originally planted them, which was good news. Instead, they were simply overwhelmed by tall grasses. Once these were trimmed down, we could see that not only did all the bushes survive, but they didn’t look half-bad (considering). Most had berries.

For each bush, I fit a double layer of weed cloth around it, followed by a collar. Then I laid a double-layer of weed cloth throughout the rest of the section…

… and graveled it.

It took several days of working just in the mornings (when it’s cool) to get all the berries done, but the result is splendid.

Until we get a drip system in place, all I need to do to water is drop the cattle panel to the ground, and I can water directly into the collar around each plant. When I’m done, I simply pick up the panel and lean it back against the poles.

It’s worth noting that the enclosure itself – the poles braced by well pipes, with deer netting draped over and cattle panels at the bottom – has worked perfectly. The local deer (and elk) population has never even tried to breach these defenses.

As for the bushes themselves, they’re producing beautifully. Considering their rocky start, they’ve been very forgiving.

The young peach trees are next. (By the way, they don’t have deer netting over them, of course. Just around them.) They’re doing better, simply because they weren’t choked by grasses. But they look sloppy, and I don’t like sloppy gardens.

So that’s our long and convoluted journey toward blueberries. If I had done things correctly from the start, they would have been a lot less work. But at least they’re done now.