A Codie story

A couple of days ago this was my berry box.  On the left side of the picture are my cranberries, recently planted.  When I was prepping the bed to plant the cranberries I was adding peat moss to the sand that had been in there for a long time.  As I was mixing the peat into the sand i discovered an old bone that had probably been buried.  Usually it is Codie that buries stuff and we have seen Sadie watching her and later going and getting it.  I offered the bone to Sadie who was laying under the tree and she didn't seem too interested in it.  Later I gave it to Codie.

I didn't think anything more about that bone until I came out of the greenhouse today to find Codie standing in the cranberries gingerly pawing at the soil mixture in the cranberry bed.  I called to her to get out of the bed and when I got closer this is what I found:

She had holes dug all over the bed and the only thing that I could come up with is that she was looking for that bone that was long gone.  She appears to have carefully gone around the plants and none of them seem to have been damaged.  Tomorrow I will smooth the dirt mixture and if it looks like it will be an ongoing problem I will put the old blueberry fence around the box. That Codie.  She is such an important part of the farm.  It is hard to be angry with her. 

the berry box

Years ago when my kids were small we had a sandbox.  I have been considering what to do with it since it is no longer used and have also been considering adding more fruit to the farm.  Last year I began reading about cranberries as I love craisins in salads and learned that cranberries grow in a part sand/part peat mixture.  I divided the sandbox in two parts and built a little platform in the center as that part of the box would be hard to reach to plant, weed or harvest without climbing into the box.  I moved the little bit of sand that was remaining into the north part of the box for the cranberries and planned to put another fruit in the south U-shaped portion.

Over the course of last summer it became apparent that my efforts to amend the soil in my row of six blueberry plants was not working.  The plants were alive but just barely.  They were not thriving.  they were not increasing in size and although they had a few leaves the leaves were yellow in color.  I used a pH kit to try to see what the pH of the soil was.  I added vinegar and coffee grounds and sulfur with no improvement noted.  I am not sure how long those amendments need in order to cause a change  I bought a pH meter and still my soil was not acidic.

Over the winter I did some reading and video watching about gardening blueberries in containers and began to think about moving my blueberries and decided to put them in the other part of the sandbox.  One of the videos I watched suggested a container mix that was 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 wood bark chips and 1/3 azalea potting mix. Early this spring I began trying to source those products in order to prep the space and hopefully move the blueberries while there were still dormant.  In this post  there is a picture of the sandbox  with its two sides with their special soil mixtures and here is a picture of the planted bed.  Right now I have the sundial sitting on the center platform but I can also picture it with a birdbath or some form of garden art.  It would also be pretty with some potted flowers. 

The cranberries are looking great.  It is hard to tell for sure about the blueberries.  Are they still dormant?  Just starting to notice that it is spring?  There are the brown twigs but also some paler twigs which I am hopeful are new growth.  not having had any successful experience with blueberries I am not sure what to expect.

Got my fingers crossed.