Some great looking plants Brady. I tried 10 hardwood cuttings and got zero, zilch to grow. I will try again next year, not sure what I did wrong. It's interesting to see the leaves on your plants versus mine...west to east. Maybe it just the way the photo was taken but your leaves look slightly larger on average than mine do. A local grower was telling me he measured the average leaf size on a plants on the west side (Oregon) and found they are about 30% larger on average for same plant variety. This kind of makes sense when you think about the heat we have on this side versus where you are at. A smaller leaf surface would help conserve water. I think the berries on your Chippewa look bigger than those I had last year....mine were really tiny and way too many of them on one plant. The Chippewa grows like a dense shrub whereas the Reka, Bluecrop, etc. are more spindly. I thinned out my Chippewas this past winter by probably 50% and it has lots of new shoots coming up and wants to be a shrub again. Here's one of my Reka, this plant is 4 1/2 feet tall or so. Then here's a Chippewa which is maybe three feet tall growing right next to the Reka:

Here's some info on another great blackberry for LOW chill areas.....May not be available in the USA...not sure....Really would love to try growing these.... http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=92918#SlideFrame_1 Six years of research and development have paid off for pioneering produce marketer Pure Fresh with the first harvest and successful retailing of a new, improved blackberry variety, Stella. Stella, a medium-sized berry slightly bigger than the popular and flavourful Tupy, has a higher sugar content and longer shelf life than other varieties. The exciting new Pure Fresh blackberry also has a more cylindrical shape for a better, more durable fit in clamshell packaging, a significant benefit for retailers and consumers of the delicate fruit. The elongated shape of the Pure Fresh Stella allows for better arrangement in the clamshell, minimizing pressure on the high-water content blackberries and preventing bursting and leaking during transit, said Roberto Castaneda Sr., the founder of Pure Fresh and its parent company, Guatemala and Mexico based grower Planesa. We are very happy, announced Castaneda. We call the blackberry Stella because it is now the star of the Pure Fresh berry program. Stella means star in Italian. We see a lot of future in it. It is a new and modern variety,Castaneda said. Pure Fresh is the exclusive importer and marketer of the Stella under the Pure Fresh brand, and Planesa is the exclusive producer of the Stella in Guatemala and Central America. The Quest for a Better-Shaped Blackberry with Improved Flavor Planesa has been working on improving blackberry varieties since 1998 with Dr. John R. Clark at the University of Arkansas, which has one of the world's most successful blackberry variety programs, said Castaneda. Clark and Planesa introduced the commercially popular Kiowa variety to Guatemala and the high-yielding Kiowa today accounts for 90 percent of the blackberry volume out of Guatemala, one of the few countries in the world where the Kiowa has been produced successfully, said Castaneda. The Kiowa replaced the Brazos variety which was not as superior to the Kiowa. Building on Castaneda's philosophy that new and better varieties are the key to staying ahead in the produce business, Planesa sought a blackberry even better than the Kiowa. The innovating company had seen excellent results with the Brazilian Tupy blackberry on its farms in the Mexican state of Michoacan. The international grower began growing Tupy in Guatemala and it has shown some success but yields are lower than those in Mexico. So the search began to find a new berry that would have better yields in the sub-tropical Guatemala climate. Planesa and the University of Arkansas set up a testing agreement to evaluate several unreleased selections for possible adaptation to Guatemala, said Dr. Clark. This selection was tested by Planesa in Guatemala and found to perform well in the low-chill environment in Guatemala. It is a thornless plant, and produces large, long berries of good quality. Postharvest evaluations have indicated superior postharvest capability compared to Kiowa, a key attribute for shipping a fresh-market blackberry. .......... Here is a link that might be useful: News article on Stella Blackberry

Ben - Thanks for reporting back. It's always nice to see how projects have worked out! Your beds look great and the plants in them happy. A few suggestions: Put in edging between your grass and beds because if you don't, the grass will move into the wonderful soil in the beds you have created, and it's difficult to get out once established. You can cut a v shaped ditch that you renew once or twice a year; or get the heaviest duty black commercial edging and sink it to the rim so the grass hides it; or if you can find Trex type of stuff cut thin for edging. I've read that steel edging isn't kid friendly, and rocks won't do a good job of keeping the grass out. You might also want to make your beds about a foot wider to give your blueberries enough room to grow and a place to move your strawberries to when the blueberries start to shade them. (As it is you may have to prune the back side of the blueberries when they get larger to keep them from rubbing the fence.) Widening your beds needn't require the same difficulty in digging if you follow Diggingthedirt's suggestion: "You can start layering organic material in a swath - this is called the lasagne method and it works really well in areas where digging is difficult. You can search on garden web for more info about this system - just about everyone loves it and writes about their methods. The thick mulch of "stuff" - fresh (free) manure, used coffee grounds, newspapers, grass clippings, dry leaves, etc, will slowly break down, enriching the soil around your rocks and encouraging earthworms to loosen the soil for you. If you start creating this now, by next spring you'll have wonderful soil that will be much easier to dig." You can do this right over your grass if the bottom layer is a bunch of layers of newspaper or unwaxed corrugated cardboard. I'll add to the votes to swap out the pine tree for something that doesn't get so large so fast. Probably the most common mistake people make in planting is putting in plants without sufficient thought to how large the plant will ultimately be and then having to deal with the problems created further down the road. I figure you've got perhaps 10 years before it gets to the point that it's going to need a professional to get it out unless you have experience felling trees with a chain saw in tight quarters. I live in an area where white pine is native, and we have lots in our woods, and in the woods or as shade trees in our pasture I love them. At our previous house we had them near the house. They dropped pitch on the cars or whatever else was nearby, and dropped large branches when we had wet snow or heavy wind along with rain. In wet soils with heavy snow or rain and wind, the entire tree sometimes tips over, damaging whatever is in their path. When it's a 70 or 80 foot tree, that can be quite a bit of damage! It doesn't need to be removed this year or even next, but the longer you leave it, the more accustomed you will get to its screening affect, and the more you will miss it when you have to remove and replace it. (And realisically, it isn't a question of whether you will need to remove it, just a question of when and how expensive it will be; pruning the west side won't solve your problem.) Some research here on the conifers forum or the trees forum or at the American Conifer Society's website may give you some ideas more realisically sized for your site. Are you looking for year-round screening or just during warm weather? That will help determine whether you get a deciduous or evergreen replacement. You may be able to plant a replacement now several feet away, and not remove the white pine for a couple of years to let the replacement gain some size. Good luck and congratulations on a great start to your gardening. (Warning - it can be addictive!)

I wouldn't do either. I would talk to serious blueberry growers and see what they say, look for specialized information like Extension Service publications to see if there is anything about blueberries not sizing up. Otherwise all I can suggest is that maybe they aren't getting enough soil moisture during the summer. And it's not a pollination issue, right? You do have several different blueberry cultivars planted near one another so there is adequate cross pollination?