About Organic Wild Blueberries
Let’s face it, the wild blueberry is somewhat of an enigma, like a young rock star catapulted to worldwide fame while no one really knows anything about them and their private life. Thanks to health studies and modern research in nutrition over the past decade or so, blueberries are regarded as one of the great wonders of the world, a miracle fruit. They top the charts in practically every health study. More than just food, they’re a super-food! What we read and hear about them is often mixed with an aura of veneration and out-of-this-world greatness; at market, people practically get stars in their eyes when talking about them. Is all this hype warranted, or true? I can see how people could get confused! But, it is all true.
The colors of a wild blueberry field will almost always be the first thing that grabs your attention –at any time of year. Lush and verdant greens in summer, auburn reds and oranges in fall, layers of faded cranberry-reds and tawny earth-tones in winter, and bright flashes of white in bloom in spring. A wild blueberry field is a brilliant tapestry, a maze of intertwining, interconnecting life.
Look closely, and you find so much diversity and activity among the blueberry plants. A healthy field is teeming with incredible hosts of insects: spiders, ants, bees, beetles, pollinators, predators, not to mention the worms, microbes, bacteria, fungi et al that live down in the soil. An organic field also has a diverse ecosystem of plants (i.e., weeds) that become hosts or sources of food or shelter for many birds and small mammals in addition to the insects.
You then can’t help but notice the wild blueberry plants themselves. There is great genetic variation in plant height, shape and habit; leaf color and texture and size; blossom color and size and habit. Oh, and then the fruit, the wonder and beauty of the fruit! They are big and they are small and every size in between; they are round and they are oval and they are sometimes pointed like a strawberry or even pyriform; they are powdery blue and soft silver-blue and steely-metallic blue and midnight blue and night-sky black and charcoal black with a smoky blush (my favorite) and rosy-red and sometimes pinkish-white, and sometimes even striped.
Here is a crop in its native homeland. Here is the place where there is the deepest genetic diversity to be found for this species of plant on this planet. Here it is, growing in its native soils, in the place where it has evolved for millennia.
In working the wild blueberry fields of coastal Maine, I feel something akin to those who are in the Andean Altiplano of Peru working with potatoes or those who are in the Tian Shan mountain range of southeastern Kazakhstan working with apples. As Nikolai Vavilov, the great Russian scientist and plant explorer and genetic preservationist, would have explained it, here is the center of origin and diversity for this crop, its birthing grounds. Here there are not named varieties, just a deep abundance of variety. And, we must realize, we are only here tending this crop in brevity; it has been and will be here for the long haul.
One thing that’s so different about farming wild blueberries, as opposed to, say, vegetables is that there’s no sitting down in the winter thumbing through seed catalogs, no choosing new varieties or types, no making soil blocks or starting seedlings under lights. There’s no plowing or harrowing, no transplanting, no cultivating, no cover cropping or crop rotation. I have to approach and deal with this perennial native crop so completely and utterly different from the annual “imported” or non-native crops that make up our farm’s vegetable selections.
Have no doubt, there is plenty of work for a farmer to do in producing a wild blueberry crop. The wild blueberry is indeed a domesticated or cultivated crop, in the sense that it needs tending, it needs managing, to ensure a consistent, sustainable commercial yield. In reality, the farmer needs to take some of the wild out of the field.
Contrary to what many agricultural writers say and many people think, I believe that human agriculture, even organic agriculture, is not really about working with nature; it’s an un-natural act; we work against nature to keep a field or garden open and productive. Without our intervening efforts to control weeds and pests and diseases, and encourage what we want and like over what we don’t want and don’t like, we’d soon lose our fields, our gardens and our crops. It is in this work that we do as farmers, this work that is against nature, that we need to be most mindful. Of course, we can do these controlling efforts naturally, but still the purpose and the outcome are not natural.
This is indeed true for wild blueberries. Our fields would quite quickly revert back to forest if not for our agricultural activity. The wild blueberry is an understory plant in the northeastern temperate forests of coastal New England and up through the Canadian Maritimes. The only naturally occurring fields were originally to be found in the barrens in Washington County, Maine. Beginning in the late 1800’s and continuing through the mid-1900’s, the wild blueberry fields we find today were created by clearing away the trees and shrubs and other plants of the forest, and doing anything and everything possible to give advantage to the low-bush blueberry plants.
Now these short, hearty plants are adaptable and tough. They have pluck and they can bide their time. In the forest understory, they can wait decades or longer till a natural event (like a major storm blow-down) allows enough sunlight through the forest canopy to trigger them to flower and produce fruit. Fortunately, they do not rely on seed production to procreate; rather, they mostly spread and survive underground, by their healthy and vigorous rhizomes (which are like underground branches). Hence, there are some plants in the woods and fields of Maine that are over a century old. They are survivors. They are truly wild.
Yet, to manage them is not to tame them. The high-bush blueberry is the result of doing that, being the truly cultivated, selected and bred descendant of a native species of wild blueberry (a cousin of the low-bush species).
Rather, to manage them is to delve into the mysteries of the wilderness. The goal is not to work with a single crop or a single species or a single variety: no monoculture here. I have come to understand my work as an organic wild blueberry farmer to be one of encouraging and supporting a rhythm of growth, fruition and destruction, all within a complex and dynamic ecosystem that plays host to natural balances of pests and predators, disease and resistance, air and water flow. In all honesty, I understand only a fraction of the possibilities and realities of a wild blueberry field.
Despite all of the unknowns, I do know some practical matters and cultural techniques that help coax a crop out of the wilderness. Specifically, I know some of the major insect pest and disease cycles and ways to minimize their impact through regular pruning and other field management. I know the affects of applying elemental sulfur to lower the pH of the soil to make it too acidic for certain weeds. I know the significance of a deep, healthy organic pad, or duff layer, which should exist on the soil surface –a natural mulch made up of dead and decaying leaves and plant matter that is as rich as the forest floor in providing for the health of the ecosystem. I know the habitats of many native pollinators including bumblebees and sweat bees, and ways to provide for them with hedgerows or open sandy or gravelly areas. I know the importance of rain and sun and wind in proper amounts and their positive or negative influences during different phases and seasons of the wild blueberry cycle. I know how burning the field prunes and destroys the blueberry plants above ground (in addition to destroying certain weed seeds, insect pests and diseases), so that the rhizomes below ground will send up new, invigorated shoots that will grow and bear a more abundant berry crop than un-pruned, older-growth plants. I rely on all four of the elements: earth, air, water, and fire. I rely on biodiversity and the inherent stability of the cycles of life, death and decay. I rely on all this, and more, to produce a wild blueberry crop.
The colors of a wild blueberry field will almost always be the first thing that grabs your attention –at any time of year. Lush and verdant greens in summer, auburn reds and oranges in fall, layers of faded cranberry-reds and tawny earth-tones in winter, and bright flashes of white in bloom in spring. A wild blueberry field is a brilliant tapestry, a maze of intertwining, interconnecting life.
Look closely, and you find so much diversity and activity among the blueberry plants. A healthy field is teeming with incredible hosts of insects: spiders, ants, bees, beetles, pollinators, predators, not to mention the worms, microbes, bacteria, fungi et al that live down in the soil. An organic field also has a diverse ecosystem of plants (i.e., weeds) that become hosts or sources of food or shelter for many birds and small mammals in addition to the insects.
You then can’t help but notice the wild blueberry plants themselves. There is great genetic variation in plant height, shape and habit; leaf color and texture and size; blossom color and size and habit. Oh, and then the fruit, the wonder and beauty of the fruit! They are big and they are small and every size in between; they are round and they are oval and they are sometimes pointed like a strawberry or even pyriform; they are powdery blue and soft silver-blue and steely-metallic blue and midnight blue and night-sky black and charcoal black with a smoky blush (my favorite) and rosy-red and sometimes pinkish-white, and sometimes even striped.
Here is a crop in its native homeland. Here is the place where there is the deepest genetic diversity to be found for this species of plant on this planet. Here it is, growing in its native soils, in the place where it has evolved for millennia.
In working the wild blueberry fields of coastal Maine, I feel something akin to those who are in the Andean Altiplano of Peru working with potatoes or those who are in the Tian Shan mountain range of southeastern Kazakhstan working with apples. As Nikolai Vavilov, the great Russian scientist and plant explorer and genetic preservationist, would have explained it, here is the center of origin and diversity for this crop, its birthing grounds. Here there are not named varieties, just a deep abundance of variety. And, we must realize, we are only here tending this crop in brevity; it has been and will be here for the long haul.
One thing that’s so different about farming wild blueberries, as opposed to, say, vegetables is that there’s no sitting down in the winter thumbing through seed catalogs, no choosing new varieties or types, no making soil blocks or starting seedlings under lights. There’s no plowing or harrowing, no transplanting, no cultivating, no cover cropping or crop rotation. I have to approach and deal with this perennial native crop so completely and utterly different from the annual “imported” or non-native crops that make up our farm’s vegetable selections.
Have no doubt, there is plenty of work for a farmer to do in producing a wild blueberry crop. The wild blueberry is indeed a domesticated or cultivated crop, in the sense that it needs tending, it needs managing, to ensure a consistent, sustainable commercial yield. In reality, the farmer needs to take some of the wild out of the field.
Contrary to what many agricultural writers say and many people think, I believe that human agriculture, even organic agriculture, is not really about working with nature; it’s an un-natural act; we work against nature to keep a field or garden open and productive. Without our intervening efforts to control weeds and pests and diseases, and encourage what we want and like over what we don’t want and don’t like, we’d soon lose our fields, our gardens and our crops. It is in this work that we do as farmers, this work that is against nature, that we need to be most mindful. Of course, we can do these controlling efforts naturally, but still the purpose and the outcome are not natural.
This is indeed true for wild blueberries. Our fields would quite quickly revert back to forest if not for our agricultural activity. The wild blueberry is an understory plant in the northeastern temperate forests of coastal New England and up through the Canadian Maritimes. The only naturally occurring fields were originally to be found in the barrens in Washington County, Maine. Beginning in the late 1800’s and continuing through the mid-1900’s, the wild blueberry fields we find today were created by clearing away the trees and shrubs and other plants of the forest, and doing anything and everything possible to give advantage to the low-bush blueberry plants.
Now these short, hearty plants are adaptable and tough. They have pluck and they can bide their time. In the forest understory, they can wait decades or longer till a natural event (like a major storm blow-down) allows enough sunlight through the forest canopy to trigger them to flower and produce fruit. Fortunately, they do not rely on seed production to procreate; rather, they mostly spread and survive underground, by their healthy and vigorous rhizomes (which are like underground branches). Hence, there are some plants in the woods and fields of Maine that are over a century old. They are survivors. They are truly wild.
Yet, to manage them is not to tame them. The high-bush blueberry is the result of doing that, being the truly cultivated, selected and bred descendant of a native species of wild blueberry (a cousin of the low-bush species).
Rather, to manage them is to delve into the mysteries of the wilderness. The goal is not to work with a single crop or a single species or a single variety: no monoculture here. I have come to understand my work as an organic wild blueberry farmer to be one of encouraging and supporting a rhythm of growth, fruition and destruction, all within a complex and dynamic ecosystem that plays host to natural balances of pests and predators, disease and resistance, air and water flow. In all honesty, I understand only a fraction of the possibilities and realities of a wild blueberry field.
Despite all of the unknowns, I do know some practical matters and cultural techniques that help coax a crop out of the wilderness. Specifically, I know some of the major insect pest and disease cycles and ways to minimize their impact through regular pruning and other field management. I know the affects of applying elemental sulfur to lower the pH of the soil to make it too acidic for certain weeds. I know the significance of a deep, healthy organic pad, or duff layer, which should exist on the soil surface –a natural mulch made up of dead and decaying leaves and plant matter that is as rich as the forest floor in providing for the health of the ecosystem. I know the habitats of many native pollinators including bumblebees and sweat bees, and ways to provide for them with hedgerows or open sandy or gravelly areas. I know the importance of rain and sun and wind in proper amounts and their positive or negative influences during different phases and seasons of the wild blueberry cycle. I know how burning the field prunes and destroys the blueberry plants above ground (in addition to destroying certain weed seeds, insect pests and diseases), so that the rhizomes below ground will send up new, invigorated shoots that will grow and bear a more abundant berry crop than un-pruned, older-growth plants. I rely on all four of the elements: earth, air, water, and fire. I rely on biodiversity and the inherent stability of the cycles of life, death and decay. I rely on all this, and more, to produce a wild blueberry crop.
A longer, un-edited version of the above essay first appeared in Taproot Magazine, Issue 14 (Summer 2015), WILD, under the title “Tending the Wild: A Blueberry Farmer’s Odyssey,” by Nicolas Lindholm. For more info on their amazingly great publication, contact: Taproot, 120 Graham Way #200, Shelburne, VT, 05482. Phone: 802-472-1617. Website: www.taprootmag.com