Mulching

Over the past couple of years a very nice tree service has been dumping their wood chips at our place. We thought it was a mountain. We were to find out that our mountain was insufficient to cover the need.

We started the process by first loading the mulch into the old dump truck. (I probably shouldn't call it "old". It's a good little truck.)



Then I would attempt to drive the truck (in low gear) out to the blueberry field. That was an adventure in and of itself. The truck is a manually driven Ford 4X4 (I think it's a F350). It's the manual part that is tricky. I have certainly driven many cars and trucks that are manually driven, but this one requires a different touch. I would jerk and jolt and run up the engine. Not a pretty site.

Anyway, I would drive the truck out to the field and line up the tires on the outside of the blueberry rows. My husband would then rake or coerce the mulch to land in neat piles between the plants. I would then proceed to the next plant. How do you mulch 1200 blueberry plants? One at a time.

We would end up with piles of wooden mulch up and down the rows. I would then follow with the rake and smooth it out. It made a nice 4 inch mulch around the berries.

We are not quite finished. There are about 4 complete rows yet to go. (Each load barely covers one row.) But our mountain is gone. Looks like we will have to use straw or hay mulch until the tree service can help us some more.

Last weekend I went through the field and snipped off all the lovely blueberry bells...the pretty little flowers that eventually turn into blueberries. It was a hard thing to do. But it was the right thing to do. Pruning comes in many forms.... and is usually best in the long run. Much like life, eh?

Today's Journey Joy: growing blueberries