No Blueberries for Me

July 19th, 2022

   I’m beginning to think that maybe nature has banned me from the blueberry list.

The blueberry production I used to get.

   At my previous place in Cumberland County, I harvested quarts of tasty berries every summer from five blueberry bushes I planted along my western backyard border.

   The main thing I learned was to drape and secure a sturdy plastic mesh net over the plants just as the berries were forming so the birds wouldn’t get them first.

   One year I experimented without a net and didn’t get a single berry. Birds ate every last one a few days before each berry was about to ripen.

   With a net in place, I found blueberries to be reliable, trouble-free producers that needed very little care and no spraying. I even considered them to be the easiest fruit crop to grow in a home garden.

   Ah, the good old days.

   Fast-forward to my Pittsburgh “landscape,” and my harvest from seven plants this summer has been a smattering adding up to little more than a pint.

   Like everything else here, it’s been an uphill battle in the blueberry patch.

   I picked out a good-enough spot – along the top of a retaining wall in a sunny spot in front of the white border fence I installed to keep out the deer (heading off one potential crime against blueberrydom right off the bat).

   Of course the soil was atrocious black clay, so I amended it with compost and rotted leaves.

   The pH was only slightly acidic, so I added sulfur to drive down the pH and have been top-dressing with Espoma’s Soil Acidifier each year in the three years since planting.

   I mulch the bed to retain soil moisture and soak the ground when things get dry. In other words, I’ve given my new plants just as much care and attention (actually more) than the ones I left behind.

   Despite that, several of the plants just haven’t thrived. Two have done well, but two others died. I replaced the cadavers with new dwarf varieties.

   This was the first season in which plants had grown and matured enough that I got a promising round of flowers, followed by the makings of a respectable first harvest.

This netting system didn’t stop the chipmunks.

   On went the heavy-duty netting that I brought from Cumberland County, the one I bought online as a replacement for the cheapie bird netting I had been using. That type that kept getting holes poked in it by the blueberry branches and the beaks of the most voracious birds.

   The netting has again done a great job at protecting against bird thievery. But it hasn’t done diddly against my newest nemeses – chipmunks and squirrels. Especially chipmunks.

   I’ve seen these little rodents scurrying all over the yard, but I had worked out a peaceful coexistence with them since they didn’t seem to be causing any noticeable harm (other than being the unproven suspect in the girdling death of a new $80 weeping Alaska cedar over the winter).

   I knew something was going on when I noticed that berries that were about two or three days from sweet glory had suddenly disappeared. Then one day I caught a chipmunk red-pawed inside the netting, climbing up a plant and munching fruits right off the stems.

   As they say on CSI, the “unsub” was positively ID’d.

   I don’t see how the netting or any kind of fencing is going to solve this one. Chipmunks can squeeze through little openings, they can burrow, and they can climb. They can even chew through plastic.

   In this case, I think the berry-savoring little varmints are crawling under the fence from my neighbor’s yard and into the netted Garden of Eatin’ from behind.

   I’m not sure that wrapping each plant individually and tying it off at the base will help. I’m already not liking the amount of effort that’s going to entail.

   Chipmunks do trap easily, but that’s a lot of effort, too. And it’ll get me in trouble with my wife, who thinks chipmunks are “cute” and therefore worthy of the forgiveness that I’m sure wouldn’t be the case if, say, a giant lizard or snake were pilfering my berries.

   Maybe the best solution is that the blueberry gluttony will produce a lot of overweight, slower-moving, and protein-rich targets for the hawks. Then next year I’ll have more blueberries for my kitchen.

   And fat hawks.