Blueberry Patch

Wow! We had the highest turnout ever for a u-pick in our Blueberry patch on Saturday. Fortunately the berry bushes were loaded with fruit and there was plenty for everyone to pick. It was great to see a lot of old and new faces of CSA members and others from our community out in the berry patch! We’re planning another u-pick for Saturday, June 4^th.

The blueberry patch is one of my favorite areas of the farm. There are beautiful views of Harkins Slough and it is bordered on three sides by a native plant hedgerow, a row of Monterey Cypress, and the thriving riparian corridor that we planted in a drainage swale in the early 2000s. It is a peaceful place.

For the first few years after we bought this property in 2000, we didn’t use this part of the farm, because it was occupied by thick round concrete slabs (grain silo foundations) and other concrete foundations from old outbuildings — remnants of the property’s history as a dairy farm in the mid 1900s. It took a big concrete removal project in 2004 to free up the land. We hired a demolition company to haul away 60 semi dumptruckloads of concrete from the property. The picture on the left below was taken just after we had the concrete removed. The picture on the right was taken from the same spot –now the blueberry patch. The vegetation in the riparian corridor now obscures the view of the packing shed.

The soil type on much of our home farm is heavy clay, but the soil in this area is much sandier. That makes it suitable for blueberries because they need acidic soil, and it is much easier to amend the pH of sandy textured soils than clay soils. We started preparing this acre for blueberries in 2008, adding soil sulfur and mulching with redwood mulch to lower the pH. We planted the young blueberry bushes in 2009 and inject vinegar into the water when we irrigate to maintain the proper pH—that’s what the blue barrels in the picture are for. The roots like to be uniformly wetted so each row of plants has two lines of drip tape. We remulched last year with more redwood bark to keep the soil conditions right.

We started harvesting blueberries in 2011. To prevent the birds from eating them all, we first tried netting each row individually. This method made harvesting difficult as our crew had to unfasten the netting over several feet at a time to get in to harvest a few bushes, then refasten that netting and move to the next area. Not only that, but some birds inevitably found their way under the netting to get in, but then couldn’t get out. It became a regular farm kid job to open up the netting at one end of the row, then run from the other end to chase a bird to the opening. After a couple years of this, we decided to net the whole patch, which works so much better! Yes, a few birds still find their way in, but it does keep whole flocks of birds from eating every berry, and now we can enter the patch and harvest the berries without worrying about the netting.

The blueberry patch has a different feel from the row cropped areas of the farm because it took years to create and will remain for years, while the row crops are constantly rotating around. Plus, of course, the blueberries themselves are so good! This has become a special place and we enjoy sharing it with you. The next blueberry u-pick will be Saturday June 4th from 10 AM to 2 PM.