I made a quick day-trip to Lake Michigan recently and cruised passed acres and acres of blueberry bushes. Southwestern Michigan has many big farms that supply our grocery stores. Since I have grown up around farming and fresh produce, I love to hang out at the farms that let me walk through the rows, pulling berries from the branches and filling up the pouch around my waist.
As I drove west, I felt like I was near rock stars of blueberry production. Next time you look at the label on that package of blueberries in your favorite grocery store, look for the name, Leduc Farms. This family owns a 400-acre blueberry farm just west of Kalamazoo as you head to Lake Michigan. There are also many smaller farms to pick your own blueberries and festivals centered around that beautiful little blueberry.
Shrubs
In the late fall and winter, blueberry shrubs should be cut down a couple of feet every winter. Cut the broken and damaged branches first. Cutting will give the shrubs more energy to produce fruit next summer.
To keep your berries sweet, you might need to amend the soil at the base of the shrubs with sulfur. To give the shrub a good base of compost, side-dress the rows with com posted leaves in the fall. This will also keep the weeds down between the lanes.
Highbush variety
Highbush blueberries don’t need a companion to cross-pollinate and produce fruit. But growers say you will get better fruit if you mix two cultivars close together and let hem cross-pollinate. Bluetta is an early cultivar and Elliott is a late fruiting cultivar. Bluecrop, Berkeley, and Herbert are all midseason cultivars that are good to excellent fruit producers.
This ornamental fruiting shrub is pretty in the landscape, but it needs highly acidic soil to thrive. That’s why farms are finding such success when they side-dress their crop with sulfur. Most garden soil has a pH near 6.5, which is neutral. Blueberries prefer to have their soil pH at 4.5. Test the soil before planting blueberries and after amending the soil with sulfur. According to Ohio State University, you would need to apply 4.8 pounds of sulfur on a 100 square foot plot in your garden to drop the pH from 6.5 to 4.5.
It takes about three years for the high bush blueberries to start producing enough fruit to keep, so wait to prune them until their roots get established.
Air assault
With all of that lovely fruit hanging from the branches, it is very tempting to other critters, especially birds. Gardeners try all kinds of ways to scare them away. Disposable foil pie pans dangling from the branches will work for short term, but most serious growers cover their crops with a light netting. It isn’t foolproof, but it will protect most of your crop.
Local farms
You can find a few you-pick blueberry farms in southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio. According to youpick.org, you can find blueberries in Lenawee County at Kapnick Orchards, 4245 Rogers Hwy., Britton. In Monroe County, stop by Erie Orchard, 1235 Erie Rd., Erie. In northwest Ohio, look for Hoen’s Orchard in Fulton County, 12540 County Rd. 7-2, Delta, or Johnson Fruit Farm, 2790 Airport Highway, Swanton.
You can also load up the car and head toward Lake Michigan. You won’t miss them and you will have a beautiful sunset once you hit the beach in South Haven.
Contact Kelly Heidbreder at: getgrowing@gmail.com.
First Published August 16, 2017, 5:12 a.m.
