Our Small Farm Update
I have always wanted a farm, since I was a very young child. Every year, me and Farmer Bob expand our small farm. This year we have an additional small corn field with pumpkins growing at the edges to keep the raccoons out. We did not prepare the soil well enough and the corn and pumpkins have needed alot of fertilizer and we cannot keep the weeds down. The field is aprox. 60 feet by 35 feet. Lesson learned.
My main garden is truly beautiful this summer. Pole beans have been in for a couple of weeks. I am especially pleased with the Malibu Pole Bean. Bush beans need harvesting tomorrow and more yellow squash is in. I left the garden alone for a couple of days and so today, the chickens feasted on overgrown yellow crookneck squash.
For supper tonight, fresh veggie tray with early carrots (thinned out from main crop), Diva cucumber sliced, early Tango celery stalks. Fresh green beans — Sunset and Malibu Pole. Lettuce for our hamburger and pickles from last season.
Planted my fall crop of broccoli and cabbage after pulling the Candy Onion crop from its bed. Not a fantastic crop of onions — raised bed lacking in adequate depth I think. Planted fall crop of Premium Shelling Peas.
Expanded our turkey brood to 22 turkeys this year. Narragansett turkeys. We will harvest so many, sell so many, and keep some to breed and raise a new flock. When we received our shipment of young turkeys this May, many many were dead in the shipping box. This was especially upsetting and we won’t use this hatchery again. When they shipped our replacements, they also included seven chicks of unknown variety. We opened up our old coop and fenced the yard and now we have seven chickens of unknown variety and unknown sex.
Still did not get a blueberry crop. We have done something wrong to our blueberry plants and they no longer fruit. Looks like we need to cut them down and start again. Not a good strawberry year either.
I have picked off more slugs and snails and thrown them to the chickens than I care to ever remember.
Umm… you do know that blueberry set fruit on one year old wood stock.. so if you are hacking them down you won’t get fruit until the second year. (so if you hacked them last year… that would be why you have nothing this year.) They also are not self fertile so you need to have 2 types at least and ideally several shrubs to have good enough pollination for a proper crop.
Strawberries are one of those that seem to do well for 2 years and then you have to fidget with keeping the runners going to replace the originals while not letting them get crowded to keep the pickings going well.
Very sorry about your poultry and hope they are doing well now. Slugs galore by us too which is to the point where they are giving me nightmares lol. Wish I had ducks or chickens to feed them to!
Hi Anne- No, we have never hacked them down. Three years ago we had so much fruit we cram filled eight to ten gallon bags of it. The following year, we did some very conservative pruning, only removing the dead, fertilized with the proper fertilizer and that was it. Hardly any fruit. We figured we had over-fertilized and maybe over-pruned so we completely left them all. Except to add to the bed with 6 new bushes, of two different varieties and those fruited well as they were three years old. Now we have little fruit. We have at least six different varieties growing in the same bed and we have about 25 bushes. Everything I read to figure this out says we may need to competely hack them down and start over – other than the new ones that still fruit. Do you have any other suggestions as to what has happened to the blueberry bushes? Yes, strawberries only have a two year life cycle. Next year, I am going to build a raised raised bed, because my back cannot take the bending over anymore to pick. Thanks! Jennifer
What time of year did you fertilize? I am guessing that they didn’t set flowers (as you said the other shrubs did produce.. so it wouldn’t be a lack of pollinators). Also.. what time of year did you prune them?
Reason why I am asking is that if you fertilized after they bloomed it could have triggered late growth in fall which could have lead to damage over the winter. In late winter is when you do want to cut out the dead and diseased wood and some moderate pruning (you can cut off more later, but once cut you can’t undo it if you catch my drift.) You prune out a few of the smaller 1st year growth (some of the thin stems) and leave the hardier 1st year stems be as they will produce the bigger berries. Which brings me to another question about the fertilizer.. what type did you use? I am guessing you used the ones based off of ammonium make the soil more acidic.. which the blueberry shrubs need. If you used one that provided nitrogen in the form of a nitrate then it could very well have raised the ph levels. (Btw.. do you know what the ph level is? With that many shrubs you might want to consider sending in soil samples to be tested so you have an idea what is missing, or what there is plenty of so you can amend it accordingly. Sometimes too much of a good thing just leaves you with.. well.. a lot of leaves!)
Well… what i would do is that if u cant get them 2 grow then u need 2 start a whole new bed.. maybe the strawberrys r taking up all the juice and vitimas the blueberrys need. so i hope u get an answer that will help very soon
Lynne