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Blueberry Pruning

We recently got finished pruning our blueberries. We have a little over an acre planting; about 800 plants, so it can be quite a chore pruning by hand, especially since I had a lot of bad work to undo from neglecting to prune last year. All the same, it’s not an unpleasant task, and it’s really important for good quality fruit that’s easier to pick. Properly pruned bushes yield greater quantities of larger berries,

As bushes get older, and tall, berry yeild will decrease significantly because of the lack of new wood to produce buds. They also will get t and bushy, and light won’t be able to reach the inside of the bush. So the fruit will set on the outside, which means much of the area of the plant will be unproductive.
Be just to prune shortly after harvest is finished, otherwise you’ll be cutting off new growth, which is next year’s fruiting wood.

On rabbiteyes, it’s good to prune the bushes down to about 5-6 feet in height to make it easier to pick. These cuts are called heading cuts, and should be even across the bush. If your bush has more than 5 or 6 canes, prune back the smallest and weakest looking. Finally, all branches growing inward should be cut. Think of a teacup. You want all the branches growing outward from the base.

Now keep in mind all I grow is rabbiteye blueberries. If you don’t live in the South, then you’d be growing highbush or lowbush berries. I don’t know to much about those, but Mike at diy-guides.com has a good article on them here. Pruning should be similar, especially for highbush berries.

Here’s a few pictures, again taken by camera phone so excuse the quality, to illustrate what I mean:

From Pruned Blueberry bush

A young, recently pruned bush. Notice the lack of inward growing branches. I actually pruned this bush down to 4 feet, all those new shoots, about a third of the height of the bush, are only a month old.

From Pruned Blueberry bush

Base of another young plant. Not ideal, I’d rather the canes not be all clumped together like that, but I wanted to show a picture demonstrating the lack of branches near the base of the plant. I prefer a high canopy, as it makes harvesting easier. Also,  those low branches are twiggy and produce poor quality fruit. Best to keep fruit bearing wood up off the ground.

Hope this helps. Happy pruning!

Spinosads…..an Organic Insecticide?

This year I planted a lot of fall tomatoes for market. Having experienced a great deal of worm problems in fall tomatoes in past years I decided to start this venture prepared, so I ordered a bottle of Monterey Garden Insect Spray. Made with a somewhat recently “discovered” ingredient called “spinosads”

Spinosads are a class of soil dwelling bacteria labelled Saccharopolyspora spinosa. Biological warfare, if you will. Like BT.

To quote the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom (Wikipedia):

“Spinosad (spinosyn A and spinosyn D) are a new chemical class of insecticides that are registered by the United States Environmental Protection Agency‎ (EPA) to control a variety of insects. The active ingredient is derived from a naturally occurring soil dwelling bacterium called Saccharopolyspora spinosa, a rare actinomycete reportedly collected from soil in an abandoned rum distillery on a Caribbean Island in 1982 by a scientist on vacation^[1] . It has not been found in nature since that time, and was subsequently described as a new species. The bacteria produce compounds (metabolites) while in a fermentation broth. The first fermentation-derived compound was formulated in 1988. Spinosad has since been formulated into insecticides that combine the efficacy of a synthetic insecticide with the benefits of a biological pest control organism.”

Anywho…Sure enough after the plants set fruit, the hornworms came with a vengeance, and while my back was turned had defoliated several plants. So I pulled out the bottle and gave it a go. Surprisingly, for a not terribly popular organic insecticide, it worked great! I sprayed at dusk (while the bees weren’t hanging around), and the next morning I was rewarded with the sight of brown, shrivelled hornworms, either on the ground or hanging limply from the leaves. Like this dude:

From Pests

Awesome right?

Yes, in a way, and while it was nice to have a cure-all for my trouble it was a bitter-sweet victory. And I probably won’t use it again on my fall tomatoes unless I absolutely have to. While, for insecticides, it’s pretty mild, and is OMRI listed and completely usable for Organic production.  It’s still highly toxic to bees and wasps. Less so to other beneficials. But, even that’s not so bad if you take into consideration the results of this study:

Although spinosad has low toxicity to most beneficial insects, initial acute laboratory tests indicated that spinosad is intrinsically toxic to pollinators. The hazard of spinosad to bees was evaluated using a tiered approach. Initial acute laboratory exposures were conducted, followed by toxicity of residues of spinosad on treated foliage, greenhouse studies to assess acute as well as chronic toxicity, confined field assessments, and finally full field studies using a variety of crops under typical use conditions. These data were used to assess the potential of adverse effects on foraging bees following the use of spinosad. This research has clearly demonstrated that spinosad residues that have been allowed to dry for 3 hr are not acutely harmful to honeybees when low-volume and ultralow-volume sprays are used. Further, glasshouse and semifield studies have demonstrated that dried residues are not acutely toxic, and although pollen and nectar from sprayed plants may have transient effects on brood development, the residues do not overtly affect hive viability of either the honeybee or the bumblebee. Field studies in which typical application methods of spinosad were used on a variety of crops have demonstrated that spinosad has low risk to adult honeybees and has little or no effect on hive activity and brood development. The collective evidence from these studies indicates that once spinosad residues have dried on plant foliage, generally 3 hr or less, the risk of spinosad to honeybees is negligible.

So why a bitter-sweet victory then? I sprayed at dusk, when no pollinators were out. I probably didn’t hurt a fly, especially since I sprayed pretty lightly anyway.

All the same, Organic farming and gardening is about prevention, not spraying the heck out of stuff. Products like the one I used are something you don’t want to grow to depend on. Still, it worked, and I’m glad I purchased it. Definitely a good thing to have on hand for bad times. You can get it here .