My new "vineyard"

[jswordy]

I LOVE blueberry wine! And I just so happened to find out I have a friend who has about 100 balled blueberry plants ready to be planted that are surplus to her. So Saturday, I started planting. I got 11 in so far. I will be planting again Friday afternoon. It looks like 20 of them are coming to my place when it's all done. I can't say no to FREE!



You may notice the mound they are on. This is a former vineyard that was so dilapidated that we eventually cleared it when we came here 23 years ago. The trees in the background are growing on another former grape mound. The cleared area between the tree and the brush growth in the background is due to become one row of grapes at some point. The bushes have to be further cleared out first.

 

[grapeman]

That's nice of the neighbor. I bet they like wine too! I see a future "Thank You" bottle or two of blueberry wine and maybe something a bit sooner.

 

[jswordy]

She's actually a coworker and a beer drinker! It's a 60-mile round trip to get the plants. But these things are big and nice, having been removed from a farm that has gone to subdivision. Worth the effort, at this price. I wish I had more space for them, they said I could take all I wanted.

 

[Polarhug]

Beautiful! Are the a bush that will get much larger? Just wondering about the distance between each

 

[grapeman]

What is the pH of the soil? Blueberries like a sour soil with a low pH of 5.0 or even lower.

 

[Runningwolf]

Jim that's awesome you got those. It's late to prune now but when you do you want to prune the centers so the sun can get it. When you get the rest you might consider planting then fairly close so then you can make a pvc arah way down the row to make it easy to net them in a few years when they really start producing.

 

[jswordy]

We have experience with the Southern rabbit eye and high bush blueberries.

Blueberries generally get 10-14 feet high here and typically 4-5 feet wide. Believe me, by the time those fill in, each pairing will look like one big bush with only slots in between them to walk in and pick. Actually, I may have planted them a tad too close for their mature width. Normal aisles in a rowed blueberry patch here are 10 or 12 feet wide.

The soil is naturally acid. Southern varieties like a 6.0-6.5 pH. We typically mulch with pine needles from our pine grove in fall to raise acidity even more. They currently are mulched with last years' fall leaves.

I put these in a shaded spot because it gets so hot here for so long that a half-day of shade is a good thing. My next plantings will be in full sun.

I am planning to plant 10-12 or so more of them. These bushes were huge 4 years ago when they were on the farm, but they have been balled and basically just sitting in a group covered with a little pine bark mulch all this time since then. They actually produced while that way.

The fact that they were once huge and productive means they have very well-developed root systems now, which is why I am not stripping them of blossoms, as would otherwise be common first-year practice.

Dan, it is not common to net blueberries here, they are so super-productive and the bushes grow so large, but we are already considering ways to do that if we need to. The picking season is extremely short - 3 weeks max. If I put in another dozen we'll have about 30 bushes total, and that should go a long way in 3-4 years to keep us in berries.

The bees found them almost instantly after I planted them.

I also have a volunteer grape vine that has grown up in a cedar tree. I want to try to root clippings off that and see what it would produce in open sun with proper care. The grapes produced in the cedar are very small, smaller than a dime. The birds get the weak production, caused by being shaded all the time.

Then there are Arne's currants, valiantly struggling to live but not having a good time with the heat. I am down to 4 living potted specimens now. We'll see.

 

[Arne]

LOL, if they die off let me know and we will try try again. If they don't live that way, we will dig up a couple with roots and send em down. Arne.

 

[jswordy]

LOL, if they die off let me know and we will try try again. If they don't live that way, we will dig up a couple with roots and send em down. Arne.

Well, as I found out when we started this lil experiment, currants are not supposed to survive this far south. But since I once sent a pecan tree sapling to a feller up in West Virginia, and he amazed the university professors by carefully getting it to grow and survive their winters, I want to give this a shot too.

The currants have not been able to take the rapid heat waves, when it jumps to over 85 and then the next wave is 70s and then the next wave is 85 again, even though they are in the shade. It's cooler now. My theory is that only the strongest will survive. We'll see.

I'm grabbing 10 more blueberry bushes Friday while the getting is good. That'll make about 150 pounds of berries when mature.