Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Fall is for Transplanting at Farmer Mac's Berries

The leaves are falling, the blueberry plants themselves are turning a marvelous shade of dark red, and the dormant season is quickly approaching.

Last year about this time, we had a planting party where volunteers helped us plant 4,200 cuttings. We put them into empty rows and nursery sections of the fields. Most of them have weathered the summer quite well. We lost some plants to the extremely dry climate we've had this year, but no more than would be expected.

For those of you who were here during the summer, you saw much of the rejuvenation process that we are undergoing. We've cleared out rows and transplanted large plants into empty spots in parts of the field. The rows that we cleared out will be the home of the new plants in the nursery sections. We'll allow the empty rows to overwinter without plantings to allow the soil to rest up for the growth spurts ahead when we put the two year old plants into their final field spots.

Right now, we're moving the last of the large plants to their new locations. We hope to have this process completed by December, just in time to start our winter pruning.

We hope to have a larger crop of the Oneal variety next year as our 4 year plants will be producing more fruit than they did this year.

But as the holidays approach, don't forget to take some of those blueberries out of the freezer to make blue-cranberry sauce or blueberry pies. They go great with all holiday meals!

Melissa

2 comments:

  1. Mmm... A blueberry pie sounds great. Too bad my wife and I already knocked off the 35 pounds picked this year! Next year going for 50...

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  2. Ah, our freezer is empty too! I usually have an upright freezer completely full by the end of blueberry season. This year, every single berry we picked we sold so I didn't add any to the paltry stash I had left from last year.

    Can't wait til next season starts!
    Melissa

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