Blueberries Everywhere?

A Smart Living Snip-It From Suzanne Holtkamp

“Want an easy fruit to grow in Georgia?  Just plant a few blueberry bushes and you’ll be set for decades with sweet, nutritious fruit the whole family will enjoy!”  – every gardening magazine ever published

Uh huh.  Well, I guess that author never visited my particular yard or witnessed my relentless, valiant attempts to grow these suckers for the past five years.  I am not ashamed to tell you I have killed over a dozen blueberry bushes.  In fact, when I shop the fruit section of the local nursery, I swear I can hear the bushes talking to one another, “Here she comes.  Duck!  Hide! Go limp or she’ll get you!”

Well, guys, this is the year.  Knock on wood.  Before I show pictures, let me share with you the blueberry facts I learned the hard way:

1) Unless self-fertile, blueberries need a pollinator which most likely is a different cultivar of blueberry.  In other words, check the nursery tag and don’t buy 10,000 bushes of the same type and wonder why there is no fruit!

2) Blueberries like acidic soil.  Don’t let them get anywhere near lime (the kind you use on your lawn) or wood ashes.  If in doubt when planting, use peat moss or azalea soil; both are acidic.

3) Birds like blueberries as much as you.  When the berries are almost ripe, the aerial attacks will begin. So, be smart and cover the bush with netting.

Eleven new bushes have been planted on the east side. Stones found on our property were gathered and stacked to build the wall.

A new cultivar called "Blue Suede" has given me hope that four bushes in my kitchen garden will yield BIG in a few weeks!

 

"The Blueberry"

So what’s the deal with the car?  Meet “The Blueberry”, at least that’s what my daughters started calling the Ford CMax we purchased for the sales department.  (I think they borrowed from the show Psych.)  It’s a hybrid vehicle that boasts 47 mpg and with all the driving our sales guys do, it was definitely an intriguing, energy-smart solution. We’re giving it a go before we decide to convert the whole sales team.

The preliminary feedback has been extremely positive – fun to drive, spacious enough for blower door equipment, and just downright cool!  The electric motor which starts as you crank the key makes the car as quiet as, well, a golf cart.  “Let’s take The Blueberry” now echoes down the Holtkamp HVAC halls.  Not to mention the fact that eating blueberries in The Blueberry is just too good to pass up!

So now you have the whole blueberry story.  Use your knowledge wisely.

Matthew steathly drives away while no one is looking.

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