Blueberry planting time!

Spring is here, and with it, the need to get our new blueberry plants in something to grow a crop this year. Since we are planing on moving the farm within a year or two, we don't want to place them in the ground permanently just yet. So, working with a local nursery we decided to place the plants into the new things called "grow bags".

Grow bags are 35 gallon bags make of something like felt. The rough surface inside the bag encourages roots to stop lengthening when they hit the side of the bag and start bushing out instead. In contrast, plastic pots let the roots grow round and round in circles until it becomes root bound. These bags should give us a couple years of growing room before planting in the ground itself is a necessity.

So we started transplanting the big blueberry plants into the grow bags. We used a mixture of organic potting soil, organic pete moss, and as much of the original root ball as possible. What a challenge! By the end of the day, with only 5 plants potted, myself ad my young farm hand were both beat! These mature blueberry plants weight a ton, are challenging to work with, and just generally tired us out! It will be worth it though, when we have buckets of fresh ripe blueberries to pick this very first summer!

We placed the finished blueberry plants into the orchard, to line the fences. My plan is to keep the plants all within the orchard to make a nice "hedge" along the fence where they are save from the sheep and llama, but the turkeys can find shelter under their shade. We will need some sort of protection from the birds eating all our berries. The berries along the bottom will be a nice food source for the young turkeys, but wild birds will steal all the upper berries if we let them. Netting seems appropriate for that.

The first 5 blueberry plants in their semi-permanent home

The toms had to come check out the new additions!

Closeup of the blueberry inside the grow pot. Perhaps we should have gone with one size larger.