Planting Blueberries

We decided to plant some blueberry bushes so we can grow our own fresh blueberries for pies, jams, desserts and smoothies. 

We read that the soil should be more acidic than most soil.  There were several ways to do that.  One was to incorporate pine needles or pine bark in the ground and as a mulch.  We didn't have any pine needles but had a fair bit of pine bark from firewood my son cut from deadfall at the ranch/orchard he was working at.  We used some of the bark as a groundcover under one of the grape arbors.  We had more stockpiled to use under another arbor when we got enough to cover it.

This is the bark we used.  When I gathered it up, Lulu helped to disperse the beetles, centipedes and other bugs.  She had a great time waiting for me to lift the bark so she could go "hunting".

I used our chipper to shred the bark into smaller pieces.  The chipper has a detachable bag that I used so the shredded bark wouldn't spread all over the garden.

We spread the bark on the row where we were going to plant the blueberries and tilled it into the soil.

Once this was done, we were ready to start planting.

I read that you can use peat moss to help with the acidity of the soil.  We mixed more pine bark, and some peat moss with the original soil from the hole.  We dug it deeper than needed so we could put several inches of the bark/peat mix at the bottom.

We set the plant in the hole and added more of the amended soil.

We tamped down the soil around the plant.  We then removed all flowers from the bushes so the plant's energy would go to rerooting and growing instead of producing fruit.  There were many flowers so we have high hopes for a good crop next year.

We mulched the plant with more shredded pine bark.

We then added landscape fabric and mulched with even more bark.

We laid the soaker hose with the additional mister nozzles as in our other bushes.

We finished in between the rows with the shavings we hauled in.  They are finer than the bark I shredded but I think all the contrasts in the groundcovers looks neat.

Now to watch and wait until next year to eat our own blueberries.  ;)

Mulching Fruit Bushes

If you remember my blog last year about using wood shavings -

http://mountaingardengleanings.blogspot.ca/2011/09/shavings.html , one of the uses were for a groundcover.  This year, we decided to buy some landscape fabric and cover the rest of the area in the back that is home to our small fruits (grapes, raspberries, saskatoons, blueberries, rhubarb and kiwi).  The newspapers I used last year are still working in the one row I tried but they probably won't last for many years.  With the landscape cloth and the shavings, I hope to have very little weeding back there.

First thing we did was do a good weeding and raked the area so it was basically level.

You can see the weeds between the grape arbor - they do have a tendency to get away from us.  Hopefully this will be the solution to that problem.

The fabric we bought allows water through it so we laid the drip hoses on top of the fabric and shavings so we can monitor it.  We found the drip line did not work well as the tiny holes would plug up so we added nozzles that mist the row.  We cut holes in the fabric where the plants were growing and then covered the whole thing with a thick layer of shavings.

We worked on one length at a time and kept the shavings away from the edge so we could overlap the next length. 

When we finished one row, we continued onto the next.  At the ends we place slabs of wood to hold the shavings in and to cover the ends of the fabric.  That way we can extend the area if we need to.  We are thinking about added some raised beds for strawberries and such and think that we will do it in that area of the yard.

We hauled many, many loads of shavings on the van and the job took us several weeks to complete but it was worth the end product.  Doesn't it look nice?  It seems nice to as we got a variety of shavings - fir, pine, spruce and cedar.

Next year we will redo the row I did last year with the newspaper and continue out that side of the patch.  :)

Uses for Wood Shavings

We get wood shavings from a sawmill near town.  There are several mills around here and they all give away their wood shavings.  It saves them having to pay to haul them away.  We have found one place that has the perfect shavings for us.  At some of the other places, they are too fine and contain too much sawdust so they are hard to use.  All you need is a shovel and garbage bags and you are in business.

We mostly use the shavings for the chicken coop.  I use the deep-litter method to cover the floor and find it works great with little or no smell and little work on a daily and weekly basis. 

How the deep-litter method works is that you cover the floor with shavings and as the girls poo (usually from high on the roosts at night) you add more shavings and it all gets mixed together.  The shavings keep the floors dry and relatively odor free.  Some people rake out the droppings but I don't.  Some people stir them into the shavings but I don't.  What I do is occasionally throw in a handful of scratch (grain) and the girls stir it up with their digging and scratching.  When the shavings are too dirty, usually they are 6 to 8" deep they get hauled out to use in the garden and we start again.  They get spread on the half of the garden we are not using that year and dug in so they break down and provide nutrients for the next season.

I also read that you can use the shavings as ground cover so I decided to try that in the raspberry patch.  First we weeded between the rows.

Then it was rototilled and raked smooth.

Next we overlapped newspapers.  We layered them around half a dozen pages thick or so.  This is supposed to help keep the weeds down.

After the newspaper was down, we dumped on the shavings and spread them around.

The shavings are around three inches thick between the rows.

Now doesn't that look nice?  I think it will work great so we won't have to till between the rows.  If the shavings get too packed, we can just add more.  All it takes is a trip to the mill and we're in business again.

If it works well then we will use paper and shavings as ground cover between all the permanent rows at the back.  Only time will tell.  ;)