Blueberries and mud
I hope my poor, malingering blueberries will
malinger no more! The little things haven't had much going for
them in the two years they've been in the yard. I bought them for
a few bucks at Wal-Mart when they'd barely grown a root apiece, then I
stuck them in sweet soil and mulched them with nitrogen-leaching wood
chips.
I'm hoping to
remedy the damage with a little TLC. Yesterday I treated them
to some soil acidifier, as well as a nice mulch of mixed pine needles
and decidous leaf mould from the hill above the house. I also
used a gift certificate to order a few larger plants from a more
reputable nursery. The pullets are busy
scratching up and fertilizing the new ground in preparation for our
second round of blueberries' arrival this spring.
I also decided to experiment a bit with the mudhole between the
nectarine and grapes. The soil there is pure clay and in our
recent wet spell the chickens churned it up into a mass of mud. I
found some old grain seeds hidden behind my desk and sowed them in the
muddiest spots. If I remember right, the grain is rye, meant to
be planted in early fall as a cover crop. But maybe it'll do
something to hold the soil together and outcompete the Japanese
honeysuckle which is what naturally grows in that area. Only time
will tell...
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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