Food Forest building – Beautiful Chaos

The berry garden is recovering

After mulching the berry garden with a thick layer of leaves the blueberries are doing a lot better. The berry garden needed a good weeding and we added a layer of woodchips as well.

I am so happy seeing the blueberry plants looking healthy again. Last year they looked so terrible that I was afraid they all would die. This early spring we divided a full trailer load of leaves over the berry garden and we started watering the blueberries on a regular base as soon as it became warmer and dryer. This effort has paid of and the blueberries are thriving. There leaves have a healthy green colour and they are making new twigs, even shooting new twigs from the roots which need to penetrate the thick mulch layer first.

A white blueberry shoot in leave mulch — **New Blueberry shoot**

We even have been able to snack on a few very tasty blueberries already.

We also planted our currants here last fall and the black currants where ready to harvest.

A black currant twig with ripe black currants

I harvested about 1,5 kg of black currants, which went into the freezer for later processing. I usually collect all of the berries I can get first (currants, raspberries and blackberries) and then juice them all together. We use this juice in yoghurt or I make jelly out of it.

The white currant somehow does not want to ripen. They look good, but still taste so sour, so we will wait a little more before harvesting.

The couch grass keeps growing through, so we weeded thoroughly and added a layer of woodchips again, since the leaf mulch is decomposing and getting thinner.

I am hoping on becoming another trailer of leaves this winter to add a new thinner layer and to expand the berry garden. I want to relocate the raspberries, since they are doing miserable and need to be planted in good, nutrient rich soil, which holds moisture better. I also want to plant a row of strawberries, since they do not do well in the bad soil in our garden 2 and I would love to harvest some decent strawberries, but that is work for the fall.

No peaches for us

I was so happy this spring. There where little peaches on our peach tree for the first time since we planted the tree, but …

the little peaches are all drying in and falling off. A part of the leaves also look wilted. Was it the late frost, or does this tree have another problem? I don’t know.

A part of a peach tree with some healthy looking leaves and some wilted leaves

Up-date on our Berry garden

Trying to save the blueberries with a thick layer of leaves

My Blueberry bushes looked miserable last year and they gave only a handful of fruit. When we bought them the year before they where packed with fruit, so there must be a reason the blueberry bushes are not very happy.

One problem could be lack of water. We did not water them last growing season. Although the soil is very moisture retaining, there could have been too little moisture.

Another problem could have been the fact that they where overgrown last spring. We just timely did not manage to maintain the berry garden.

Another problem could be that the soil is not acidic enough. An indication for that are the leaves, which are not a nice bright green, but tend to a slightly yellower green. This could indicate that the ph-level is not to there liking.

To improve the berry garden we mowed the grass and weeds short and divided a thick layer of leaves over the entire patch. Obviously it will take some time for the leaves to decompose and for the ph-level to change, but the thick layer of leaves will also retain moisture much better and will keep the weed pressure down. This way we tackle 3 problems at once.

After a few weeks some weeds still came trough, so we will have to pull these out and improve the mulch layer. Since we do not have any more leaves we will use woodchips for that.

We interplant the blueberries with currants after clearing and removing some of the raised beds from our garden 2. That might have been a bad idea, but at the moment we do not have a suitable place from them. We are planning to expand our berry garden, but we have to get rid of all of the couch grass and the weeds there first. After we succeed with that we will relocate the currant bushes to give the blueberry bushes there needed space back.

Here are some impressions taken on 2 different dates: