Blueberries From Farm to Fork

Welcome to my page all about blueberries! Here you will find information taking you from the farm all the way to your fork. This will include tried and true recipes, planting, and harvesting tips for all things blueberries.

Quick Links to Topics on this Page:

• Favorite Blueberry Recipes
• Blueberry Picking
• Starting a New Blueberry Patch
• Getting the Soil Ready for a Blueberry Patch
• Maintenance for a Blueberry Patch
• Harvesting Blueberries
• Preserving and Keeping Blueberries Fresh

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The best part of raising backyard blueberry bushes is the sweet taste of sun-ripened berries. You can’t buy that in the grocery store! Speaking of taste, let’s get right to our favorite freshly picked blueberry recipes.

Favorite Blueberry Recipes

Fresh sun-ripened blueberries are so tasty all by themselves that we usually eat them straight. Another favorite is blueberry pie and I simply follow the recipe in the Kraft Minute Tapioca box and use the Barton Pie Crust in the notes section of my Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Recipe. Blueberries can be easily added to muffins or bread just like this yummy bread below – enjoy!

Blueberry Picking

Typically blueberry picking season in the upstate of South Carolina is late June – August. We have a few blueberry bushes on the Barton Farm, but not enough for the number of mouths on the farm. Also, some of our blueberries are wild blueberries relocated from a forest, so they are tart and not the plump juicy sweet variety. We usually do our blueberry picking at a local farm, if you’re in the Upstate of SC, Gentry Farm is fantastic! Another good one is the Happy Berry,  it’s just in the middle of nowhere! Here are a few of my favorite blueberry pickers 🙂 The Lemon Blueberry Bread recipe above is from the Happy Berry. My memory of this farm was telling my husband he could pick the weekend family activity. He chose to take us blueberry picking in the South Carolina heat of July. I was 7 months pregnant and we had a potty training toddler, perfect pick right? Also, at this time they didn’t have a bathroom and the blueberry bushes are on a hillside. It made for a memorable day, one I would not soon repeat! After this experience, I was careful with laying out options for acceptable family activities given all circumstances.

Starting a New Blueberry Patch

Have you ever taken a trip to a local blueberry patch flourishing with juicy ripe blueberries and thought, I could totally do this at home? Just me? Well, we did. I asked for a small blueberry patch, but if you’ve been around the site, or our hobby farm, at all you would know the Barton motto is always in effect: more is better. This ended up being a good thing because more than half the plants did not survive! Since half of them did survive I knew it wasn’t the soil or watering efforts, so I just need to get replacement plants for the fatalities. Read on for tips on starting a new blueberry patch.

Getting the Soil Ready for a Blueberry Patch

First, consider the location of your blueberry patch, they are tolerant of shade but do much better in full sun. You don’t want to plant too close to trees as they may suck up moisture in the soil that the blueberry bushes need to survive.

Our new patch location was just field grass, so we first tilled it up. If you don’t have a tiller you can rent one fairly inexpensively at Home Depot. This step wasn’t completely necessary as blueberry bushes can be surrounded by grass, unlike most vegetable gardens that would not thrive surrounding by grass. The other difference between Blueberry bushes and most other fruits and veggies is that they require much more acidic soil, so likely you will want a separate area for a blueberry patch.

To achieve the level of acidity you typically need to add a special fertilizer to your soil. So along with the cow manure, we added Down to Earth All Natural Acid Mix for additional fertilizer around all the plants and then mulched over the rows up to the plants. Another good thing add around blueberry bushes is coffee grounds, and boy do we have a lot of those around here!

Maintenance for a Blueberry Patch

Blueberries are a remarkably carefree plant. There aren’t many insects or diseases that attack them. Sometimes birds become a problem and adding a net over the patch becomes necessary.

Watering blueberries to keep the soil moist, but not soggy, is a must. We added a soaker hose to make watering a little easier and more efficient, and also some fencing around the patch to keep the critters out. I think some visitors come to our hobby farm expecting a zoo exhibit with all the cage fencing around the property.

Harvesting Blueberries

Many newly planted blueberry bushes will not bear fruit the first few years, in fact, many bushes take 3-5 years to produce fruit! So when is the best time to plant blueberries – five years ago!

With a well-maintained patch, you will have several pickings throughout the growing season on the order of 5-7 pints of fruit per blueberry bush. Pick blueberries at their peak when they are a gray-blue color.

Preserving and Keeping Blueberries Fresh

Blueberries taste best freshly picked, but will also keep if refrigerated. They will taste sweeter if you let them come to room temperature before eating. If you have too many berries to consume before they will go bad, make some Jam! SURE-JELL Fruit Pectin is my go-to first step in making jam and the recipe is right in the box. Or if you don’t have time for jam, blueberries freeze well in a freezer-safe Ziploc bag. You can enjoy freezer fresh blueberries all year long in smoothies, muffins, added to oatmeal, blueberry sauce, or to flavor kombucha. Hopefully, I’ve inspired you to start your very own backyard blueberry patch, or maybe you’re satisfied with just reading about mine today.

Blog Posts about Hobby Farming

Check out the blog for more information about what’s new at Barton Craft & Barn including the following post about our hobby farming experiences.

Just Getting Started Gardening?

I put together a list of my top garden tools to help the newbie get the needed gardening essentials. If you are getting started gardening, or want to be more prepared this season, check out the printable in my free resource library for my favorite garden tools to get your gardening on. Hope you enjoy!