Blueberries in clay and slightly alkaline soil.

Yup you can all start laughing at me now if you want, but I am determine to try. If I were a patient person, as previously discussed I am more like a 3 year old in the patience department, I would have prepped the soil this fall and planted in the spring but as typical my enthusiasm got the best of me. Looking around my yard I saw a place that could be separated from the rest of my soil so it might be easier to control the PH. Blueberries like a PH of 4-5.5 and our soil in the Chicagoland area is not even close. We have the exact opposite soil preferred by blueberries. Oh well, the kids love them and they are ghastly expensive at the store so why not. I know people who prefer to container garden these and I am considering that as well. I honestly don't think I can have too many berries in this household.

So I started with this bed:
Sorry the picture is so far. I always forget take pictures at the start of the project. It is too bad I didn't take pictures of this process. It was a real pain in the patootie. A seventeen foot yew bush, which was five different plants, was my nemesis. I have never like Yew bushes so it was almost cathartic ripping it from the ground. They are a pain and give you nothing except green. Boring. It was about 20 years old and had roots like (insert great analogy here cause I got nothing). I acutally used bolt cutters to snip some of the more burly roots.

Yup, there the beastie is. Many scratches and muscle pulls later and it was out. I should mention my FIL was going to come with his car and help pull them out with a rope, which would have been great if not for my enthusiasm getting the best of me, again. All I had to do was wait two little days. Nah, I got out the shovel and got to work. After they were pulled I put down 3 cubic feet of moss, which will acidify the soil as it decomposes. I also mixed in needles from the yew bush. Hey, it might help. Then I put in Espoma Soil Acidifer. It takes time to work but I have so far reduced the PH from almost 8 to about 6.5 and my moss isn't doing its thing yet.

So here is the new bed. From left to right:

Unsure      Chippewa     BlueJay    Polaris     Chippewa
The small bushes in front at patio blueberries from Gurney. I am getting one more patio blueberry for the naked spot. They are small and I hope I didn't crowd them too much.

The one I am unsure about had some smoke damage but that is another story. I have read to not prune these guys for the first three years. Stay tuned to see if these manage to produce berries in the next few seasons. Anyway, the ugly Yew is gone and that makes me happy.