Every summer, blueberry lovers everywhere await the arrival
of this sweet Georgia crop.
Some of them, willing to pay a little extra, don’t wait that
long.

"Southern highbush blueberries ripen in April and
May," said Gerard Krewer, a
horticulturist with the University of Georgia Extension
Service.

Rabbiteye blueberries, the type grown most in Georgia, mature
mostly in June and July.
Georgia has around 4,000 acres of blueberries — more than any
other Southern state.

But only about 5 percent are the highbush type. So the
blueberry supply is slim in
April and May. That makes prices high, on both domestic and
export markets. It also makes
the lure of growing highbush berries strong.

But Southern highbush blueberries don’t grow just
anywhere.

"They usually grow well only on certain soils that are
high in organic matter but
have a well-drained topsoil," Krewer said. "There’s
only a very limited acreage
of this type of soil in Georgia."

Growers with the more common soil types have found two
options. One is to plant them in
soil highly amended with peat moss or milled pine bark and
mulched with four inches of
pine bark nuggets.

The other method calls for planting directly into beds of
four to six inches of milled
pine bark. This high-density system is "very
promising," Krewer said.

"Both methods work well," he said, "but the
plants have grown best when
grown directly in milled pine bark."

The high-density system calls for beds 30 feet wide with 10-
foot aisles between them.
The bushes are planted in rows across the beds, like the rungs
of a ladder. Growers can
spray down the rows of bushes from the aisles.

Begun in Florida three years ago, the system requires daily
watering. And since pine
bark doesn’t hold nutrients well, growers must fertilize the
beds every three to four
weeks during the growing season.

The plants’ roots stay in the pine bark, Krewer said. But
they don’t seem to blow down
any worse than plants in soil. That’s apparently because they
grow such dense mats of
intermingled roots.

Southern highbush blueberry plants won’t do well if they’re
too wet or too dry, he
said. The pine bark system works well because there’s so much
pine bark per plant — at
normal spacings, nearly 40 gallons per plant.

"You can grow a mighty big plant in a 40-gallon
pot," Krewer said.

Because the system is so much like a nursery, growers can
plant even rooted cuttings in
the beds. And the plants grow fast.

One grower near Valdosta, with just over an acre of high-
density beds, grew plants from
rooted cuttings to bushes three to four feet high in about six
months.

The daily watering and narrow spacing present problems for
southern highbush plants,
since they’re susceptible to disease. Growers must use a regular
program of fungicide
sprays to keep the bushes healthy.

Krewer said a small number of Georgia growers planted about
nine acres of high-density
blueberries this year.

It’s a costly system to put in — $10,000 per acre or more.
But the returns come
quicker than with other blueberry systems. Growers should begin
harvesting berries in
April of the second year. They should get full harvests in the
third year or fourth year.

And they should get premium prices for their early-season
harvests. The growing number
of people able to buy those early berries will figure it money
well spent.