A Victory Garden

Offerings for the birds

This morning, as I was picking blueberries, I heard my neighbors drive off to church. I was already in my church, dropping berries into my big colander as the sun finally climbed over the trees, listening to the birds singing, my cat Robin Hood twining between my feet, my chickens grabbing the berries I dropped.

I believe that a balanced and healthy relationship with Nature is essential to a balanced and healthy life. I believe that a greater Consciousness, of which we are a part, creates physical reality and we are co-creators, part of a web of existence, not separate from it.

So today, after picking another couple of gallons to freeze, I will pull the bird netting off of the blueberries and allow the birds to finish off the harvest. There are still quite a few berries on these bushes, both ripe and unripe  – I could get at least another gallon if I left the netting on – but it’s important to me to share with the birds, to give them a gift that is the result of my labor planting, growing, pruning and fertilizing the blueberries. After all, they give me so much -- their songs and beauty, not to mention the insect control. I acknowledge the web of life with this gift, and I'll offer a prayer and a song to the spirits of the land as well on this fine morning.

 Here’s an interesting article on how food gardening is taking off in Britain.

Back to my blueberries!

Growing blueberries

I’ve been promising to answer some of the questions I had gotten about blueberries from my previous post, and then this morning I found that one of my favorite bloggers (and singer/songwriters!), Christine Kane, had been taken to task for not giving enough information about blueberries in a post she had titled “A Crash Course in Blueberries” (which was really about taking delight in life – and blueberries) But it certainly seems that more info on blueberries needs to get out there, so here goes…

Blueberries are pretty easy to grow, especially here in the Eastern US, where the soils are naturally somewhat to very acidic. Depending on the variety, the bushes (and I’m discussing the more common highbush blueberry here) are anywhere from 2 to 7 feet tall. They are pretty, and turn a lovely color in the fall, so they work well as a hedge as well as a food crop. I suggest planting several varieties with different maturity dates, so that you have a longer harvest. You can plant pot-grown plants at any time during the growing season, but spring is best. You can get a head start on site preparation now. 

First, you’ll want a location that gets full sun, with well-drained soil that has a pH low enough for blueberries (between 4.8 and 5.5). If rhododendrons and azaleas grow well in your soil, you’ll probably be fine, but a soil test is always a good thing, courtesy of your local agricultural extension agency. If your pH is too high, talk to your extension agent about how to lower it, but you’ll need to delay your planting for about a year while you do that. Good drainage is also important.

Blueberries like a soil that is high in organic matter, so dig in plenty of compost, leaf mold or well-rotted manure. If you are not too impatient, I’d suggest tilling the area now and planting a cover crop of oats or something else that will grow quickly and winter-kill reliably in your area to add organic matter and get a head-start on weed control. You can also just throw down a few inches of fairly fresh horse manure right on top of the soil now and let it rot over winter. But don’t plant until spring if you do this. 

When you plant, dig a hole twice as big as the root ball, and plant a bit deeper than the plant grew in the nursery. Plant 6 to 8 feet apart. Don’t put fertilizer in the planting hole! Backfill with soil about halfway, then give it a good soaking to settle the soil around the roots. Finish by filling the rest of the hole, watering really well, and mulching. I use brown cardboard or newspaper under wood chip mulch. Wet the cardboard/newspaper before putting down the wood chips. The mulch is important, as blueberries are shallow-rooted and sensitive to drought. 

I find blueberries don’t need much fertilizer. I throw down some compost and a bit of bloodmeal or some Holly-tone in the spring before renewing the mulch. Newly planted berries should be fertilized about a month after planting. 

You won’t need to prune out anything except weak or broken canes for the first 4 or 5 years, then you’ll want to prune out the old canes (gray with peeling bark) and weak shoots. I’ll write more about pruning them in late winter, which is the best time to prune. 

Now, I still owe you that peach/blueberry cobbler recipe, and I promise I won’t forget!

Getting serious about food storage

Sharon Astyk has an excellent post today on the need to store at least 3 months of food. Read it here

She makes an very good case for stocking up NOW.

Water, water, here and there….

We are in the middle of a drought here in the Southeast. My friend Byron gave me a rain gauge a few weeks ago, and I’m loving it! I now know, for instance, that we accumulated a whole inch of rain over the past 3 days (for a change!), and I don’t have to water my garden this week. I’ve been guessing/intuiting or digging down in the dirt to check how much water is needed for so long, it’s fun to go out there and check quickly and accurately without leaving my front porch.  It’s also a great relief to get all the rain that is currently needed for the garden from the sky alone.

Gardens – vegetable gardens, at least – need at least an inch of rain per week to thrive. You can shave that a little with heavy mulch, but only a little. Most veggies are between 80% to 90% water – they just can’t do without it. Today I put a bit of fertilizer down today here and there just before the rain. When plants are flowering and beginning to form fruit is usually a good time to give them a bit of fertilizer as a side dressing (in other words, scratch it into the soil near the plant), and let the rain carry it to the roots. I am partial to Vegetables Alive from Gardens Alive.

 Soil crusts over when it is dry and little seedlings have a hard time breaking through. This is one of the reasons I’ve always found carrots to be somewhat daunting – I plant them too deep, or I don’t keep them watered enough (they are sensitive to soil crusting), or I don’t thin them enough. Since organic carrots are easy to find in supermarkets, I’ve only planted them occasionally and experimentally, but this year I’m working on growing my own  --  or at least a few of my own!

I just planted some last week, and put a layer of burlap over the bed to hold in some moisture. Of course, I need to watch carefully and remove it as soon as the little seedlings start popping their heads out of the ground. I also planted in rows instead of broadcasting, to make thinning easier, AND I planted on a waning moon, the best time to plant root crops. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oh, and I had blueberry questions to answer…but I don’t have time now. Next post!

Quote of the day...

"The $1.2 billion the World Bank says will solve the food crisis in Africa is a $1.2 billion subsidy to the chemical industry," said Vandana Shiva, an Indian physics professor and environmental activist speaking at the forum in Modena.

"Countries are made dependent on chemical fertilizers when their prices have tripled in the last year due to rising oil prices," she said. "I say to governments: spend a quarter of that on organic farming and you've solved your problems."

Read the whole article here: 

I'll be back tomorrow with answers to some blueberry questions and my latest carrot experiment...

More evidence of our communal insanity...

There are options. We do not need all these pesticides to grow food. Continuing to foul our nest like this is insane!

Home-grown veg ruined by toxic fertiliser

And, of course, if the manure is contaminated, it's likely the animals are too. And anyone who eats food grown or raised on that farm.