Blueberry-Patch-To-Be!

 Yesterday I got up fairly early, put on my snake-and-ant-protection boots and went out to the garden patch where we have had zucchini (unsuccessfully), heirloom tomatoes (unsuccessfully), and several other things (unsuccessfully) planted the past two years.  It is time to move on.

We decided that we would like to try blueberries since we love them. They are easy to pick. They are easy to store in the freezer. They are SO easy to eat!  We are now set on learning if they are easy to plant and grow.  As it happens our Christmas dinner guests have a lot of knowledge of growing blueberries.  One of them (Santa!) had brought us many buckets of two-year-old animal dung to start the ball rolling to organic-matter-ify this wretched orange clay soil.

A few days after the buckets arrived, I spread them on the garden. Some days after that I went out with the garden fork to turn over the soil. Did. Not. Work. So I went back into the house until yesterday when I took the long-handled round-pointed shovel and my stroller.  My pink gloves protected my hands so I could confidently pick up some of the organic matter/weeds I had laid on the garden as "mulch" at the end of the year. Our HOA will not allow compost piles so mulch was the way to go...  Many of the woody parts of the plants were still lying on the top of the ground so I moved them to the bushes toward the pond (which the alligators MAY have vacated!!! To my great joy and comfort.)

Here is the dug up plot. It does not look spectacular but I did manage to get the whole thing dug up.  It is about 3 feet by 18 feet. We hope to plant at least 3 blueberry plants there.

Now I am researching blueberry culture in South Carolina Midlands.  Or as close as I can find on YouTube.  I Googled Clemson Extension Service and Blueberries and got a gentleman in North Carolina teaching a blueberry pruning/growing class.  Pretty interesting. It looks like we need pine bark mulch to dig into the ground for aeration. We also need spaghnum peat moss from Canada to get the PH down to 4.5.  AND also we probably need to raise up the bed even more. We shall see how we do!

Any suggestions from locals who are successful with blueberries are welcome!