Food Forest building – Page 3

Where are the blueberries?

Was it a bad idea to clear the patch from all the weeds?

After planting the blueberry bushes we covered the surrounding soil with woodchips. What we had forgotten was to put cardboard down first, so after a few months the blueberry patch looked like in the picture above.

We made it a family affair and started weeding. We even needed to dig up some of the bigger weeds, but freeing the first blueberry bush and seeing how well it looked was very nice.

A small blueberry bush with woodchips at its feed against a background of weeds

The only down side is that we only found a handful of (obvious still unripe) blueberries on the bushes.

After a few days I noticed that the blueberries did not look so good anymore. The leafs are not really green anymore. Was it sunburn?

We left some of the flowering “weeds” for the bees.

A few daisies against a background of woodchips and weeds — **Daisies**

A big malve bush with pink flowers against a background of woodchips and weeds — **Malve**

Making a blueberry patch

Taking another step in building our food forest

For my last birthday I wished for some blueberry bushes to plant in our garden. We love the taste of blueberries and what we love so much we need to grow our selves. There is nothing compared to the taste of berries which are self grown and freshly picked and eaten right there in the garden.

So we went and purchased 10 blueberry bushes last fall. It took a little while before we actually planted them, but finally we did. Blueberries need acetic soil and we have this corner in our garden 3 where we filled up a big hole with sawdust, bark and smaller pieces of wood from our sawmill a few years ago. We finished this of with a layer of normal soil. The organic matter has been decomposing and we thought the time was right for planting by now.

The blueberry bushes should be planted 2 meters apart, but we just divided the 10 bushes on the designated patch. I always find it difficult to respect the recommended plant spacing. The blueberry patch still looks so empty with only the 10 blueberry bushes and a panicle hydrangea. After planting we divided a thick layer of woodchips over the entire blueberry patch. At first it looked really tidy and ratter empty. The naked blueberry bushes where hard to see against the background of the woodchips. Obviously the woodchips did not really hold down the weeds, but at least the blueberries have gotten there leaves now and the blueberry patch does not look so empty any more.

We got 5 different kinds of blueberries with different ripening times and so I updated my garden layout of our garden 3.

Blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum)

B1: Berkley
B2: Herbert Frühreifend
B3: Ama
B4: Goldtraube 71
B5: Patriot

P6: panicle hydrangea, Rispen Hortensie

Here you can find the overview of our gardens.

How is the, from caterpillars invaded, pear tree doing

New growth on the pear tree and flowers, flowers, flowers…

We had a pitiful sight this spring when we found our young pear tree eaten all leafs of by an army of caterpillars. We collected all of the caterpillars and after a few weeks the pear tree recovered. The pear tree grew new leaves and is looking good. It is amazing. Fruit trees make a blast of growth in the spring after which they seem to stand still and invest there energy in flowering and starting there fruit. After the development of the fruit the fruit trees make another blast of growth. Thanks to that the pear tree is looking good and healthy again.