Blueberries in Bloom

Growing blueberries in Wisconsin can be super easy or incredibly difficult. There are places in Wisconsin where a gardener can literally plant them in the ground and walk away (Wisconsin Rapids through Tomah). Other places, this part of central Wisconsin-- not so much. A clue for you, if Ocean Spray or one of the other big cranberry producers is growing cranberries in your area, you're a lucky gardener when it comes to blueberries.

The rest of us, buckle up for the ride.

The biggest problem, other than pricey plants(!), is generally the blueberries for sale in your big box store are not necessarily the ones best suited for your growing area. I have had the good fortune to be able to discuss blueberry growing with a doctor of horticulture and one of the larger blueberry farmers in the Midwest. Without getting in the difference between high bush and low bush blueberries, when it comes to cultivars, choose those with the words "blue" or "north" in their cultivar name. Good examples are 'Blueray', 'Northsky', or 'Northern Blue'. Another cultivar, which is really a selection of the native wild variety found here in Wisconsin is 'Friendship'.

'Friendship' has a lot going for it; hardiness, disease resistance, good wild blueberry taste, and yield. The down side is the berries are smaller.While blueberries can self-pollinate, it is recommended you choose a couple varieties with overlapping bloom times for heavier yield.

Blueberries are strange as I have seen some cultivars with ripe berries, while other are coming into bloom. Nor do the berries ripen all at one time. The berry production seems to be spread over a fairly lengthy time frame. For these reasons, you need to set out a number of plants to provide enough berries at any given time, if you intend to preserve them or make a pie. In the family garden, I planted 20 plants of two varieties. In my own potager, I have six plants.

After you have chosen your plants, you need to think about your soil. Freely draining soil with lots of organic material is best. Blueberries like water, too, although do not care for wet feet. Counter-intuitively, blueberries could do as well in a swamp as a hilly ravine.

Acidity of the soil is the next hurdle for the would-be blueberry gardener. Here in central Wisconsin, the rain actually has an alkaline pH. The very water from the sky is working against the pH you need to build into your soil to support blueberry culture. The acidity that is the same thing that azaleas need to thrive, and your hydrangeas need to be blue is necessary to blueberries. Without this acidity, it is difficult for blueberry roots to extract the elements from the soil it needs to survive, putting your blueberry plants in a constant state of stress.

I have had some luck with azaleas by over-fertilizing them and careful watering. It is possible the home blueberry gardener could have good luck the same way. It is much easier to work a lot of organic material into your planting area beforehand and top-dress seasonally with the same spaghum peat moss. Some gardeners may not prefer the esthetic but mulching with a four-inch layer of pine needles each year is also helpful. In the picture above, I am also taking advantage of the natural acidity of the cellulose in shredded paper by using my caged blueberry area as my shredded paper composting area.

Here in central Wisconsin, rabbits are an issue. Deer, however, can be just as bad. There is a country road winding back and forth not far from here through a cutout in a hill with the Blueberry Hill Road. When I was a child, I would pick blueberries on this hill. Now, I would be hard put to find more than a couple plants. Increases in the deer herd and its browse of these plants through the winter has all but decimated these plants. So a fencing and netting (birds, should you get to the berry-producing stage) is vital.

Unless they yet freeze, always a possibility it seems in central Wisconsin, my blueberries look like I may just have a few batches of blueberry muffins in my future from these bushes I planted last spring.

Saturday is a Projects Day

I have been substitute teaching a lot this year. Politics being what they are, here in Wisconsin; there are a lot of teachers re-evaluating their life choices. One teacher I know is getting his CDL and I moving to India (where is wife teaches in an international school. Another, having her first child at the advanced age at which I gave birth to Handsome Son. All of this subbing, although great for my paycheck, is not so good with just getting everything done in a single parent household. It seems my car is constantly behind on its oil change. The vacuuming is never done, a job I thought I could delegate to Handsome Son who failed to realize we had a busted belt and the roller was not turning. It wasn't until I attempted to follow up on his shoddy performance on his bedroom carpet, that I realized what the problem was.

So today, I have a full day looming large. A day filled with laundry, replacing said belt and vacuuming, cleaning, potting on seedlings, planting seeds indoors and out, and also, in general, sprucing up my home in anticipation of the Commencement of Handsome Son.

I have also taken on a quilting project  for the mother of the manager my Handsome Son's basketball team.  She wanted a memory quilt comprised of squares from T-shirts her daughter had collected from various school and extracurricular activities.  The quilt sits at the top of my to-do list because the mother wants to display it at her graduation party.  The top of the quilt can be seen in this picture.  It gives you the general idea of the project, although unfinished.

Watering my potted seedling like the pretty peppers, pictured here, is also taking up more of my time. I am not sure what sort of harvest we will have, but with five weeks until the earliest plant out date for peppers they will demand a lot of care. One thing gardening does teach is consistency and follow-up. It is so easy to lose an entire crop with one day's indifference to the goal.

These are petunias I have grown from seed without special lights. I used regular shop lights, 4' florescent bulbs. They have been spending most days on the deck (out of room under the lights as I continue to pot on more veggies) that needs it yearly painting (being south-facing), but although frost-tolerant, even these guys have been brought in most nights. As for the beginnings of our local food harvests: There was no maple syrup season to speak of this year. My apricot tree looks pretty sad, its leaf buds and any small leaves having froze; I can not foresee a crop. Not only have the first blossoms of my strawberry plants froze, but additional blossoms as well, all spotting the "black eye" foretelling a sad tale. My very early 'Honeoye' are probably a loss. My neighbor has been putting a frost blanket on his,but as cold as it has been, Dr. Apps reports it has frozen through this safeguard, as well for his earlier cropping strawberries. He does have hopes for 'Sparkler', though. I do not have any 'Sparkler' planted this year. My blueberries, I have 'Blue Ray' and I think ' Northern Blue' like it cold, it seems; and the early variety is loaded with blooms. I may get a quart or two on the small number of bushes here in the potager. The family garden's blueberries, I do not yet know the status. As for the rhubarb, one of the earliest perennial fruits, it has a number of stalks, all very short. There are two flower stalks forming already though, which I will need to yank out. I thought this year to make rhubarb juice using my brother's fancy steamer. Hopefully, adding a fruit juice to our larder, low on juice types Handsome Son will consume. So start your projects people. It is a spring Saturday-- although at 47 degrees here-- it does not feel much like one!

Late Fall to Early Winter Garden Chores

I was hoping for a few more days of open ground here in central Wisconsin. It appears I am not going to get it. The days are just too short. Given I have just a few more tasks I need to do in the garden, I suppose I will trod along in the cold, damp, or outright wet and get them done.

I didn't get my galic planted. If I don't get it planted yet this fall I will suffer a bit smaller yield, but I will plant it as soon as I have open ground in the spring.

I don't cut back my grapes until I prune them in the spring. I did remove about half the foliage to encourage the sugar content in the grapes in late August. As I have wine grapes and I am in a marginal zone for them, I wanted to leave as much of the plant as I could to help it get through the winter.

Sometime during the winter I will top my dwarf apple tree which now has shoots at 12'. I want to encourage it to set fruit where I can reach it.

I will also use some sort of wrap on my fruit trees to discourage mice, voles, and rabbits from girdling and killing my fruit trees.

Now that I can see the structure of my shrub and hedges I will prune off the "wild hair".

I will net or enclose in some fashion the blueberries. Rabbit and deer love to nibble blueberry shrubs in winter. The growing tips where next years harvest will grow are particularly at risk from this type of foraging over winter. I already collected pine straw from under my pine tree and mulched them with about 6" of the stuff.

I pulled out tomato plants and sent them off-site to compost, but I left a couple of the kale to provide early winter greens. I will be attempting baby salad greens under lights in my grow room this winter, so I need to set some soil aside for this purpose. I have salad greens that I am still haresting next to my deck. Even a topping of snow did not deter these greens.

My brother just cut the last of the broccoli in the family garden. I harvested a couple cabbage and still have broccoli here in the potager. I have a honeydew melon I picked before the frost that just ripened which I sliced up the other day.

The period where the temperatures play along the frost line every couple nights without getting down to a really cold temperature of 23 degrees or so has this year been nearly 60 days this year. Although the days have gotten progressively shorter and Daylight Savings Time has ended, with a cold frame this could have been a very viable season for cold frame grown greens and short season crops. I have several radishes and carrots still in the ground that would make very good eating.

My sister-in-law harvested late summer planted carrots and pureed and froze them for the coming baby. She then used her steam juicer and made carrot juice from the mangled bits left over from her puree. It looked filled with vitamins, and as some of the carrots were purple the resulting juice was also a deep purple.

She also blanched a froze our comparably small parsnip harvest.

I will also harvest the greens from the celery that did not set stalks and dry them for the tasty dried greens with a great color they will provide for soup stocks over the winter.

We have a small bag of sugar beets. After Thanksgiving we are going to give it a go and see if we can extract the sugar.

I also noticed the onions I planted for early spring harvest have sprouted and are over an inch tall. I hope this method will prove itself as a way to get early spring onions and economical sets for the family garden .

We would have liked to have gotten the main rows of the family garden plowed yet this fall, but it looks like that will not happen. On the cultivator notes, my son has taken a small engine class this fall in high school and has torn apart the Mantis tiller and is cleaning it as part of his class. I'd like him to tackle my sister-in-law's tiller next.

Growing Blueberries

Blueberries growing thickly on a bush at the Chicago Botanical Gardens (CBG).
After strawberries, blueberries are probably one of the most popular fruits people would like to grow here in central Wisconsin. Unlike strawberries, blueberries have very exacting growing conditions and fall prey to a large group of animal pests. Two of my neighbors are very good at growing blueberries. Both have actual cages built to house their blueberries and both have bird netting on the top of these cages. Even here in town rabbits, deer, and finally birds would like to share in our bounty.

Our soils tend to the alkaline pH here and soil amendments is a must. A couple of inch mulch of spaghum peat moss (available in compressed bales wrapped in a plastic bagging)is a must a couple times a year. Mulching heavily, ideally with pine needles is also a good idea.

Blue berries are also heavy feeders and a good supply of water is a must as well.

Once you have tackled all the growing condition issues, it helps to choose the right cultivars. At the CBG, the hands down winner was 'Duke'. I had never heard of that cultivar, and it is possible it would not grow here just 180 miles north. Here, I recommend 'Blue Ray', 'Northblue', 'Northcountry', 'Northsky', and 'Friendship' (a native selection).

Although the foliage turns a nice color in fall and would make an excellent addition to a shrub border or great hedge, I feel you would sacrifice fruit to pests.


Tag on the CBG's most prolific blueberry bushes.


Growing blueberries as a hedge at the CBG. I am sure no rabbits bother these blueberries, nor are they ravaged by roving deer. Note the heavy (at least 4" layer of pine needles (also called pins straw).

The CBG were really good with plant identification tags and tips for the home gardener.



Close-up of blueberry 'Duke'.

My Beets, So Far, and the Potager

Burpee's Golden Beets

In addition to the family garden, I have every spare inch in my own yard planted with fruits and berries and salad fixings. My one big space splurge is the short row of potatoes, they need some space.



















Honeysuckle


Lettuce 'Butterhead'


Strawberries 'Honeoye' with a garlic scape in foreground


Edamame, finally coming up. Edible soybeans are a lot slower to germinate than I would think.


Makeshift fencing around four blueberry bushes in the potager, 'Yukon Gold' potatoes, carrots 'Little Fingers' and leaf lettuce
Soil to right has been replanted with some rutabagas and a second planting of radishes.






'William Baffin' rose showing sawfly damage

Super Hot and Then... Rain

Gardeners and farmers alike are getting frustrated with the weather this year. I'm a gardener; my Dad's a farmer. Central Wisconsin is smack-dab in the heart of Wisconsin's vegetable growing market basket.

I keep meaning to check, but I think we had measurable rain every day in May. This, after two nights of super cold and over a foot of snow in late April. The first week of June came and temperatures shot up to record highs in the mid-90s. Yesterday, it rained all day. It felt like we had six entire months of winter this year.

I realize the weather sucks almost everywhere in the continental United States. A friend told me it snowed in Hawaii...first time in 30 years. I need to confirm that!

On the western side of Wisconsin there are the apple and cranberry growers. To the east, apples and cherries. Down south in Dane and Waukesha counties, they sure grow some really pretty field corn. Here in the central sands we mine the earth for ground water, and sand is little more than a hydroponic medium to grow potatoes, sweet corn, peas, soy beans, cucumbers, and green beans.

My dad, a small dairy farmer; and as such one of the few of a diminishing breed who milks his own herd of 60 head at 78. We joke that it's his exercise program. As a dairy farmer, though, he is always interested on what the corn crop looks like when I am out and about. Particularly, is it planted, how big, and later, where is the best looking corn.

In a scene something out of 'Snow White', he asks, "who has the best corn of all?" Some years I can answer amicably, " You do, Dad."

This year, though. I am seeing too many fields, yet to be worked. They are the screwed up triangles, or chopped up fields, or odd corners. The big plots have all been planted, those where the big farmers have the huge walk-around irrigation.

I saw potatoes being planted the end of May! We typically plant them late April.

Globally, we have had some poor crop seasons recently; Australia and China particularly, had poor wheat harvests this past season. I've been expressing my concern that this year it is vitally important that America have a great crop. My Dad replies we have had a great crop for a quite a few years now, we are due for a poorer one. I pray this is not that year.

I went grocery shopping yesterday. It seemed prices had taken another leap upward. Granted, I grocery shop about once every three weeks, buying staples and making by hand the food we consume. During the growing season I augment with anything I can harvest, typically greens in May and June. I eat a lot of salads. We had rhubarb cobbler, and strawberry shortcake will soon make it on the table.

The price of milk has jumped to $2.79 a gallon for 2%, $1.99 for low-fat Monterrey Jack cheese. Five pounds of flour is $1.79, five pounds of sugar $2.79.

Amidst these prices a pint of blueberries is only $1.29. I bought three! I know some poor farmer in Martinez, Georgia, did not get paid what it cost to bring his crop to my grocer at that price. All spring, I have lamented blueberries at $3.79 a pint-- beyond my food budget. In the family garden, it is one of the big ticket items. We planted 20 blueberry bushes.

So, today, I will make fresh blueberry muffins. I will wash and freeze a pint of the precious fruit. Then tomorrow, maybe I will make a bluebbery cobbler.

But during my baking and preserving, as I wait for the sand to dry out and so I can do some gardening; I will send up a silent prayer that we continue to have a good harvest here in America,and a silent thank you and apology to the blueberry farmer whose labors I got at discount.

I admonish all of you to do the same.