building a berm for blueberry bushes

13 years ago

Im going to be building a berm for planting blueberry bushes. I have a nice large area, roughly 3500sq ft. Im going to plant around 80 bushes. IM going to build my berms this summer and finish early winter. I will ammend the planting spots every 3ft with sulfur and copperas. Im going to mulch the berms with shreaded oak leaves. My question is how deep should the berms be. The soil is terrible and mostly the orangish color on the surface. This is why IM buying topsoil and building berms. The slope is downward at maybe 8 or 10 degree pitch. I was thinking a foot deep in the center and probably 3 ft wide. I know with my experience that blueberry bushes have a shallow root system. I also will use drip irrigation with non pressure compensating emitters that are every 6 inches. I have a rain barrel storage capacity of around 1300 gallons that I use to water with. Of course this is supplemental water.I know raised beds tend to dry out faster and I will mulch heavily with oak leaves. SO is building the berms a foot deep enough for my operation. I certainly have drainage in my favor. I will make the berms nice and fertile with compost and the leaves.

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Comments (6)

mr.ed
13 years ago
Blueberries have such a small root ball, building an entire berm for them.... seems a waste. Unless you have frost pockets or wet conditions you are trying to escape? I am assuming you have red (orange) clay.

If so maybe just backfilling to bring up the grade, and digging larger than normal holes when planting; then filling with a premixed soil of peat, sand and sulfur. Might be easier for a commercial harvest, or hand harvest from a three foot high bermÂÂ atop a six foot bush IMHO.
brandond
Original Author
13 years ago
The berms would be 1 ft in height and 3 ft wide. I have a tractor to move the topsoil around. I was also condsidering planting strawberries on the sides of the berm to take advantage of the soil. It seems to me digging down for every hole would be a big waste. I have the resources to do the berm.
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Hi Charina, those are good suggestions about using baskets and pots and physical barriers. It’s just that I’ve taken the approach of disturbing the tree roots as little as possible and using small plants so I didn’t have to dig large holes in the root zone of the tree. It is actually very difficult to dig even a small or moderate size hole, let alone a large one. And after much discussion with others who had experience with Silver Maple trees, there really is very little in the way of a physical barrier that could stop their roots. [g] So I’ve taken the approach of right plant right place, thinking there has to be plants that will grow in these conditions. And I haven’t done too bad. After a lot of experimentation, I have Cornus racemosa, Blue hollies, Viburnum ‘Wentworth’, Oakleaf Hydrangea and Clethra all growing well close to the trees. I’m trying to get a Rhododendron established and even that is going better than I expected after a slow start. I think my PH is more an issue with that right now. And I’ve found a number of perennials that do fine. As for the peat being added to the blueberry planting, I’m glad that will be a pretty good solution short term. I wish I had done that with some of my Rhododendron experiments. I may go back and replant a couple of them. I have been reading posts on watering the blueberries with acidified water, adding vinegar to it. Is that something you think would be beneficial and would it have any drawbacks? When you say ‘amend continually’ you mean adding sulfur once a year? I would imagine in the Fall? And if I am adding sulfur once a year, is there going to be any drawbacks to doing that? I read something about salts building up, but I didn’t really understand that conversation. As for fertilization to offset the sawdust mulch, I would be adding organic fertilizer with low NPK composition as a topdressing periodically anyway, so that perhaps will not be a big issue. If I miss the mark somehow, the plant will probably tell me that pretty quickly, would you say? And at the point where it shows any signs of a problem, could I correct it then? Drew, I have never actually lived in a wooded location, I wonder if your experiences are typical of living in such close proximity to so many trees? When I was a kid we moved a lot, maybe 12 times, and never had the roof pierced by a tree or had to have the electrical service replaced even once. [g] I'm glad no one has been hurt. I wonder if you sleep with one eye open. :-)
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mr.ed
13 years ago
Sounds like a plan, strawberries like a mildly acid soil. I would just make sure you can harvest one without stepping on the other.

Some other things to consider.

Strawberry plantings last five years, while blueberries last 15.
You may be replanting the strawberries by the time the blueberries come into production.
Plastic mulch may benefit both berries.
Oak leaves contain tannins.
Also you can rent an auger for your tractor that would help with the hole digging. (save your back)

Best of luck, hope all goes well.
Ed
djofnelson
13 years ago
brandond, I did basically the same thing a few years ago with my loamy red clay and 1' deep and 3' wide worked for me. I used the heavy woven weed fabric (from AM Leonard, not the spun stuff in stores) on everything but the top foot of each berm and covered the whole area with wood chips. It takes me 5 minutes to weed the whole thing (30 plants in two rows), has been my easiest to maintain planting, and actually looks good. As you already seemed to be prepared for, do watch out for rapid dehyrdation on really hot, dry days.
olpea
13 years ago
I built berms for my blueberries and keep the berms covered with wood chips. In heavy rainfall periods, the berms keep the plants alive.

Personally, I'm not as optimistic about the strawberries mixed with blueberries. Strawberries are so prolific for me they are very difficult to keep from taking over an area. They even choke out grass. With something like blueberries, which are fairly non-competitive, it'd be easy for the strawberries to whomp em'.

Be careful where you buy your topsoil. I bought a truckload once. Although it looked good and black, hardly anything would grow in it for a while. I thought maybe it was that manufactured sewage sludge topsoil, but the place I bought if from claimed the soil came from farm ground. I never did find out what was wrong with that soil.
djofnelson
13 years ago
I agree with oplea about planting standard strawberries between the plants. However, I've had good results with planting alpine strawberries and ligonberries between my blueberries. If you were committed to staying on top of the runners, you could also try a standard strawberry that is low vigor and does not runner much.

building a berm for blueberry bushes

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building a berm for blueberry bushes

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brandond
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