Blueberry Bliss

Rolling up bird netting.

Kia ora!


So I got dropped off at my next wwoofing job in Broadfield at 4:45 on Saturday, the morning after the Royal Wedding.  I had to knock twice before Wendy came to open the door.  She showed me to my room and where the toilet and bathroom (real ones!) were and we both went back to bed.  She said that they had hosted a Royal Wedding dinner party where everyone had gotten dressed up and partied late.  They wouldn't be up until about 10.  Awfully nice and flexible.

I was awaken at 5:40 by several jolts.  An earthquake?  Well, I am in a suburb of Christchurch where they've had more than 5000 sizeable aftershocks.  Oh, well.  It's not shaking any more.  I rolled over and went back to sleep.  Just past 7 am, I'm awakened by another shake.  Jeez!  I'm just trying to get some sleep!  This one didn't feel as strong with a rolling motion but lasted long enough for me to get out of bed and get under the doorway.  Then I went back to bed.

Wire and pole supports. And irrigation - half on ground.

We found out later that they were 3.8 and 4.2 respectively, both about 9 km underground with the second one occuring on a different fault than the Christchurch quake and thus, it was an earthquake in itself and not an aftershock.  I don't remember having so many large aftershocks after big earthquakes in California.  We probably had them; I just don't remember.

I learned heaps at Blueberry Bliss, a pick your own blueberry farm with 1500 southern highbush blueberry bushes.  It was time to take the bird netting off for the winter.  Two ends of the orchard are permanently fenced/netted.  The other two sides and the top are netted with one enormous sheet of bird netting.  A grid of wire lines is strung from posts (6 meters? apart) along the sides of the orchard.  A block of wood is attached at each intersection and a pole sits in a notch on the underside to raise the grid up.  The bird netting sits on top of the wire grid.

One huge net is getting bulky and heavy!

My first job was to take the raised heads of the irrigation sprinklers down which just means unscrewing the last riser/head section and laying it out of the way on the ground.  Then the hard work begins.  One person (me) takes down the support poles a section at a time so that another one or preferably two people can roll up the netting as tightly as possible and get it over the wire.   All whilst minding the plants and irrigation.  Then the support poles get put back up.


In the beginning, it's not so hard but as we got further into the orchard, the rolled up netting got bulkier and heavier.  Wendy and I did almost the whole orchard ourselves in about 6 hours over 2 days.  I reattached the irrigation risers.  We spent another 2 hours tieing the netting to the supports on the 4th side.  By this time, the roll of bird netting is about 14" diameter.  Heavy work.

Before....

Then I learned how to prune blueberry bushes.  Blueberries ripen in the summer.  During autumn, flower/fruit buds are produced and the shrubs lose their leaves. The shrubs are dormant during the winter.  Most of the pruning occurs during winter.  So you can already see the buds of your potential crop.  Pollination and leaf development occur in spring.  Then the shoots, fruit, and leaves all grow through spring and summer.

Blueberries fruit on second year wood and those berries are large.  Fruit on third year wood are usually large as well.  Fruit gets smaller on older wood especially since new shoots have formed and there are more berries supported on the older wood.    Each bud produces 6 -12 flowers.

And after.

The idea is to have a good amount of big berries on each bush.  So you want to keep fresh, red wood and strong second year wood, especially if it has lots of flower/fruit buds.  You can't cut all the older wood cuz then there wouldn't be very many berries.  Older canes with little new wood are cut down.  The rest is judgement.  Well, I have plenty of knowledge on the theory of pruning.  It was practical experience that I was lacking.

So Wendy let me at it.  I pruned a few bushes and then she went over them with me.  I wasn't taking enough off.  My theory is that you can always take more off but you can't stick what you took off, back on.  So I got more aggressive.  Much better.

Pet rabbit named Frederick Winston AKA Stew or Stu

Most of the bushes are about 20 years old. On poorly performing bushes, Wendy sometimes takes almost all the canes to the ground to stimulate new growth.  If they don't perform next year, she'll yank the plants and replace them with different varieties to improve fruit yield or timing.    Some years they haven't been able to prune all the bushes.  So Wendy has experimented by hedge shearing  every other bush to look at berry density, size, or yield.  She wants to take notes and pictures of specific pruning techniques and measure results the following year.  Good idea.

I really enjoy pruning blueberry bushes, deciding what to cut and what to keep.  I'd love to see the fruits of my labor.  When I have a home again, I will definitely grow blueberries, in containers if necessary.

Cheers,
Cyn