Soil Cultivation Methods

[Daren Todd]

The berries your talking about shouldn't need much for tilled soil. We just dig a hole and watch them go nuts. Biggest issue I see with them would be keeping them contained.
And the birds out of them Other then getting the land cleared, it should just be tilling up a row here and there where you want them to go. A stake here and there or tomato towers for support. And adjusting the soil ph.
Seems like a good crop candidate for the no till option


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[OldeEnglish]

The berries your talking about shouldn't need much for tilled soil. We just dig a hole and watch them go nuts. Biggest issue I see with them would be keeping them contained.
And the birds out of them Other then getting the land cleared, it should just be tilling up a row here and there where you want them to go. A stake here and there or tomato towers for support. And adjusting the soil ph.
Seems like a good crop candidate for the no till option


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Berry plants are my favorite to grow, an easy plant to take care of besides keeping the critters away (a losing battle). Ants, birds, bear, deer, and turkey are the most common problems. I have a nice mix of blueberries, raspberries, black raspberries, and black berries. It's nice having all four because it gives you fruit all summer and raspberries right up to when the frost kills them. We usually freeze most of them and save them for the winter, nothing like some good pancakes with any of those berries!

The birds are definitely a huge problem, bears are worse. Cheese cloth works well for the birds, 4ft chicken wire for the turkeys, not much stops the deer and bear. The bear not only eat the berries but they do a number on the plant. Deer like them too, I find they like to chew on the new chutes more than eating berries. Cayenne pepper and flower work well keeping the critters from chewing anything until it rains. Borax, sugar, and water in a small plastic dish with some holes in the cover do a number on the ants. I cover it over with some Polly to keep the rain from filling the trap.

A good 20 years ago MA banned the use of hunting dogs for bear, now nobody hunts them anymore and the population has gone way up. Now everyone wonders why they can't keep the bear out of their garbage cans....

 

[Daren Todd]

We had blueberries, currents, cranberries, apples, and cherrys on the farm in vermont. Currents were planted in between a couple of cherry trees by the horse barn. We had three different varieties of blueberries. Just as one would quit producing, the next was coming ripe. Would keep us in berries most of the summer. We made a screen room out of 4x4's and 2x4's to keep the critters out of the blueberries. Gramp wasn't up on the organic farming so it was a perimeter of seven dust to keep the bugs out.

We had a few spots out in the woods for blackberries and raspberries. There was usually enough to share with the critters we would just keep an eye on the areas we cleared for the land management program and would have them pop up randomly.
I have rasberries growing wild along the fence on one side of my property. Planted a blackberry bush on the back corner, and have to jump the fence periodically to keep it from taking over the neighbors hay field.
We have 4 peach trees, two nectarines, two wild plums, two fig trees, and 2 apple trees. Gonna plant a couple of purple plums this spring in about 5 years my wife and I should have us a pretty good orchard. Of course once the trees mature our hardest challenge is gonna be keeping the neighbors out of them

 

[Daren Todd]

Oh, pie tins work really good for detering birds. I hang them in my fig trees or else the buggers will clean me out