Growing Blueberries

In these texts, Amy explains about steps toward growing blueberries in her backyard.

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English Transcript

The house that we purchased, uh, a few years ago has a 45 year old blueberry bush in the back yard.  And when we ?rst moved here, we found out that there was a blueberry bush here, and so we really wanted it to produce some berries, and it just didn’t seem to be doing well. It’s a really large bush, but it just wasn’t producing berries like we thought it would.

So I went and asked a neighbor who also has blueberry bushes, and asked her what we should be doing, and she said, “You need to have at least two because the…and they don’t need to be the same type. The two blueberry bushes need each other in order to cross pollinate, in order to – …for the ?owers to — whatever it’s called – to do what it is that they need to do to make berries.

So, she recommended that I go down to the local, uh, nursery and pick up another bush. So I did, and I went, and I didn’t just get one, I got two because I absolutely love blueberries, um, especially in the winter in Vermont. It’s just really nice to pull out of your freezer some fresh fruit, um, for your cereal or for your ice cream.

And, um, anyway, so I got two bushes, and I brought them home and started to clean out around them.  Because the, what the other thing I found out was the bushes need, the blueberry bushes need acidic soil.  And, uh, so, I cleaned out around the bushes, and found that the bush that we have, actually, there is another bush right beside it, but it was being, um, suffocated by the weeds. And, uh, so I was really happy to see that.

So I cleaned out all around it and we tilled the soil a little bit, and um, added some acidic stuff that makes the soil a little bit more acidic.  We also needed to add some peat moss and some other stuff to it  to make the soil a little bit more, uh, friendly to the blueberry bushes.  So, we’re really hoping to have a fantastic crop of blueberries, uh, within the coming years.  Right now, the bushes are pretty small. But now that we actually know how to take care of them-  and, um, we haven’t gotten them all in the ground yet-but we’re going to soon.

And now that we know how to take care of them, know what to do; make sure the soil, keeps to be — keeps the correct pH of acidity, then, uh, hopefully we’ll have some blueberries in the coming years.