A Year in the Life
Our hardest workers are our bees!
Spring
Spring is when our farms really come to life! Buds start breaking on our blueberry plants in early spring as the days get longer and the temperatures start warming. Flower buds emerge first, using all the plant's stored energy reserves. Afterwards, leafy growth begins to emerge and at this time we do our first fertilizer application of nitrogen, which provides the plants with extra nutrients they need as they continue to flush new growth and the flowers continue blooming. Once approximately 10% of flowers are blooming in the field, beehives are placed to pollinate them and will remain in place until the flowers develop into green fruit. Blueberry flowers have roughly a three-day window where they can be successfully pollinated by bees. Wild pollinators are also abundant in many of our fields, and we consider them to be just as important, if not more important, than our placed hives. Pollination is a prominent factor that drives berry size, with flowers visited multiple times by bees having the best size and a strong presence of bees overall helping to create a large, uniform crop. Pollination success can be largely influenced by environmental factors too, with bees most active on nice, sunny days and successful pollination only occurring in a certain temperature threshold.
Summer
Once flower petals fall and green fruit begins developing at the end of May and early June, we fertilize our fields again with nitrogen. During this time, plants are at their peak demand for nitrogen and require an extra boost. We perform another fertilizer application of potassium as fruit begins to ripen and turn blue. For this application of potassium, we use a method called "fertigation" that mixes fertilizer with water and pushes it through the irrigation drip lines found throughout each row. This allows us to minimize disturbances to our fields and plants while fruit is ripening. We start regularly surveying our fields for pests as well during this time, following the integrated pest management protocols we have in place, outlined in detail here. Once approximately 30-35% of berries are blue, around the first week of July, we start our harvest season! Our harvest period lasts until mid-September, when we sadly have to end our season but quickly start preparations for our next one!
Fall
Once the harvest season concludes, we perform annual soil tests for each of our fields to see where they are at and what needs to be corrected to properly maintain our fields and provide our plants proper nutrition. This includes checking factors such as pH for instance, where if it is too low and the soil is too acidic, we will apply lime to our fields to bring the pH up. We will mulch fields roughly every three years to provide additional nutrients to our fields, feed the microbiome of the soil, reduce leaching of fertilizers, and aid in moisture conservation through the heat of the summer. We will also apply our fungicides before the fall rains begin to prevent fungal and bacterial diseases such as canker and bacterial blight, which can be detrimental to the health of our plants.
We also determine which fields need to be removed and replanted, if needed. Some of our fields are over twenty years old, so this isn't often! If we do need to replant, we will cut existing plants and grind them into mulch. From there we will till the soil and form rows, pushing soil into small hills. We will add compost and mulch to these new hills to give our new plantings the best nutritional start we can, and then we plant! We like to plant as new plants are going dormant, so they get time to adjust before the next growing season. New plantings will have flowers removed each spring for a couple of years so they can funnel all their energy into growth instead of producing berries.
Lastly, we begin pruning all of our fields in the fall all the way through winter. We remove dead or weak branches, twiggy growth, and low growth to keep only strong young wood for future production. Some of our varieties are easier to prune with leaves still on the plants before they go fully dormant, so we target those first.
Winter
Pruning continues all winter and our fields are completely dormant! Not us though, we keep busy all winter maintaining our equipment, the rest of our farm, and planning for the upcoming year!
Spring is when our farms really come to life! Buds start breaking on our blueberry plants in early spring as the days get longer and the temperatures start warming. Flower buds emerge first, using all the plant's stored energy reserves. Afterwards, leafy growth begins to emerge and at this time we do our first fertilizer application of nitrogen, which provides the plants with extra nutrients they need as they continue to flush new growth and the flowers continue blooming. Once approximately 10% of flowers are blooming in the field, beehives are placed to pollinate them and will remain in place until the flowers develop into green fruit. Blueberry flowers have roughly a three-day window where they can be successfully pollinated by bees. Wild pollinators are also abundant in many of our fields, and we consider them to be just as important, if not more important, than our placed hives. Pollination is a prominent factor that drives berry size, with flowers visited multiple times by bees having the best size and a strong presence of bees overall helping to create a large, uniform crop. Pollination success can be largely influenced by environmental factors too, with bees most active on nice, sunny days and successful pollination only occurring in a certain temperature threshold.
Summer
Once flower petals fall and green fruit begins developing at the end of May and early June, we fertilize our fields again with nitrogen. During this time, plants are at their peak demand for nitrogen and require an extra boost. We perform another fertilizer application of potassium as fruit begins to ripen and turn blue. For this application of potassium, we use a method called "fertigation" that mixes fertilizer with water and pushes it through the irrigation drip lines found throughout each row. This allows us to minimize disturbances to our fields and plants while fruit is ripening. We start regularly surveying our fields for pests as well during this time, following the integrated pest management protocols we have in place, outlined in detail here. Once approximately 30-35% of berries are blue, around the first week of July, we start our harvest season! Our harvest period lasts until mid-September, when we sadly have to end our season but quickly start preparations for our next one!
Fall
Once the harvest season concludes, we perform annual soil tests for each of our fields to see where they are at and what needs to be corrected to properly maintain our fields and provide our plants proper nutrition. This includes checking factors such as pH for instance, where if it is too low and the soil is too acidic, we will apply lime to our fields to bring the pH up. We will mulch fields roughly every three years to provide additional nutrients to our fields, feed the microbiome of the soil, reduce leaching of fertilizers, and aid in moisture conservation through the heat of the summer. We will also apply our fungicides before the fall rains begin to prevent fungal and bacterial diseases such as canker and bacterial blight, which can be detrimental to the health of our plants.
We also determine which fields need to be removed and replanted, if needed. Some of our fields are over twenty years old, so this isn't often! If we do need to replant, we will cut existing plants and grind them into mulch. From there we will till the soil and form rows, pushing soil into small hills. We will add compost and mulch to these new hills to give our new plantings the best nutritional start we can, and then we plant! We like to plant as new plants are going dormant, so they get time to adjust before the next growing season. New plantings will have flowers removed each spring for a couple of years so they can funnel all their energy into growth instead of producing berries.
Lastly, we begin pruning all of our fields in the fall all the way through winter. We remove dead or weak branches, twiggy growth, and low growth to keep only strong young wood for future production. Some of our varieties are easier to prune with leaves still on the plants before they go fully dormant, so we target those first.
Winter
Pruning continues all winter and our fields are completely dormant! Not us though, we keep busy all winter maintaining our equipment, the rest of our farm, and planning for the upcoming year!
The process of planting our new rows of Calypso.