Land Selection

Blueberry It shows excellent development in soils with good drainage, sandy-loam acid and organic matter above 3%. The ideal soil pH is 4.5, but if the organic matter in the soil is high, it can tolerate pH between 3.8 and 5.5.

Garden Security

The safety of the garden before the blueberry garden plant is at least as important a factor as soil analysis.

One of the biggest problems of the blueberry growers is that they spend so much effort and money and that the blueberry seedlings can be damaged due to some reasons such as human, wild animals, natural disasters.

While the garden is being established, it should be ensured that the garden is protected against wild animals such as pigs, deer, mountain goats or stables with steel wires, it is recommended that these wires are covered with plastic because of their longevity. These animals entering the blueberry garden can cause serious damage to the saplings or fruits. In some gardens, the net is covered with a net to protect it from birds and excessive sun. Thus, the net continues to work, especially since it reduces the effect of the sun at noon and the fruits become less soft, thereby preventing loss of labor.

Producers who invest heavily in economics need to protect their facilities with security personnel and security cameras in their facilities to protect them from malicious people. In this way, you will also protect your facility against theft incidents.

No matter which branch of agriculture you deal with, your garden can always be exposed to disasters such as hail, flood, excessive snowfall or frost. However, before establishing a blueberry garden, we need to analyze the area we plan to establish a garden and obtain information about the region from the environmental farmers so that we can have the opportunity to take precautions against possible natural disaster risks in the future, even if the risk situation of the region is high, if necessary we give up.

Another danger is the areas that receive excessive wind. In these regions, blueberry cultivation is difficult and costly, and in these gardens, the seedlings must be prevented from drying out by establishing wind breakers. Since setting up a wind break in the blueberry garden may cause cost problems, it is not recommended to plant a garden in these regions.

Our recommendation to our producer friends who will be making blueberry farming is that they get support from competent experts who understand this business before starting this business. You can be damaged both in time and financially with information collected from various sites with hearsay information.

Planting Saplings

After determining the garden where the cultivation will be made, the preparation phase of the garden is started. The points to be considered at this point are soil values ​​and the fight against weeds.

Garden preparation is done by adding various fertilizers, sulfur and organic substances, if necessary, according to soil analysis reports. The garden must be completely free from weeds and weeds, otherwise this may be a serious burden for you in the future. If the garden is a sloping garden, it is recommended to make a terracing system, so that the garden will be more organized against natural disasters such as storm, and it will provide more convenient harvesting during the harvest period, and the risk of flooding will be reduced to a minimum in areas with abundant rainfall. However, when making a terrace system, make sure that the terraces are slightly inclined, this will prevent the terraces from being damaged against the floods coming from above.

If the garden will be installed on a flat land, a bobbin system must be made. It is much easier to combat weed in this system. The tubes are covered with a mulch cover so that you can save the seedlings from the grass, while you mow the grass between them by machine before harvesting. In addition, since floods are more common in flat lands, seedlings are protected from flooding in the bobbin system.

Between the rows, if it is not harvested by machine, it is between 2 mt and 2.50 mt. The row is between 1 mt and 1.50 mt.

If machine harvest is to be made (it cannot be done on terracing) If the row is between 1 mt, it must be 3 mt.

In order for the machine to be harvested to be harvested economically to meet the costs, it must be at least 70 acres in size.

When arranging the rows in the garden, it should be given importance that the sun rays enter the rows, so that the sun rays that need all the saplings should be entered from every angle.

After installing the Terrace or Spools, the seedlings pits are opened 6 months in advance and the materials deemed necessary according to the soil analysis report are mixed in the pit and the soil is provided to be aerated. During this period until planting seedlings, you rest the garden.

Before planting seedlings, you should definitely install the irrigation system. Because working with pipes in the garden after planting seedlings can damage seedlings. Planting time of the seedlings should be autumn and spring, although the tubular seedlings can be planted for 12 months, the soil temperature desired by the roots is in the autumn and spring periods.

When choosing Blueberry seedlings to be planted in the garden, considering the conditions of the geography where the garden is located, Blueberry varieties should be selected and the selected seedlings should be at least 50-60 cm in size, 2 or 3-year-old self-fertile viruses.

Blueberry seedlings to be planted are planted in the planting pit together with soil mixed with fertilizer burnt to the depth of the neck or peat mixed with soil. What must be given life water, planted blueberries. In order to keep the roots of the plant moist, natural materials are placed at the bottom, such as pine bark tree leaves, nut bark, wood shavings. If it is going to be planted in the fall, piles of 1-1.50 mt long next to the blueberries are tied to those piles, thus preventing the seedlings from being damaged when it snows.

Combating Weeds

Weed struggle in blueberry cultivation begins before planting the seedlings, and as long as the garden continues, the fight against weed continues. Many growers do not take the fight against weeds seriously before constructing a garden plant and experience the weed’s pressure on the garden when it gets involved. Therefore, in this article, we will try to guide our garden plant to our planned side friends.

Since this plant has a superficial root structure and needs food very often, weeds compete with this plant and if it does not get the nutrients it needs due to weeds, the development stops and yield decreases considerably. Especially broad-leaved herbs and woody herbs compete with this plant as water and nutrients, in this case, blueberries are weak, development stops, they are negatively affected.

The best way to combat weeds is mulching. Various herbicides are also used in weed control, but it is not a preferred method. Mulching is also applied in two methods, the first of which is the use of mulch cover over the row, and it is a very effective method used in the world. The mulching cover in the sack structure laid on the row keeps the bottom of the plant moist due to its moist structure, but prevents the emergence of weeds, and it has a lifetime of 5-6 years.

The second method is to mulch about 20 cm thick using natural materials on the rows. This method is applied in some regions, but not in some regions. This method has many advantages over mulching cover. The biggest advantage is that the rotting materials are aerating the soil over time, organic fertilizer becomes the soil moist, and it is useful in weed control.

You can keep the blueberry rows under control by mowing grass that is finished from time to time.

We would like to remind that growers producing organic blueberries, in particular, use natural materials to combat the weeds in their gardens.

Harvest

Blueberry harvesting takes place in two ways. 1. Harvesting by hand procedure 2. Machine harvesting. It is possible to buy products from an average of 1 acre blueberry garden between 1000 kg and 2000 kg.

In our country, manual harvesting is carried out by hand due to the small size of the gardens and the lack of flat lands especially in the Black Sea region and the land conditions where the harvesting machines cannot work. In our country, the harvest starts as the first week of June and continues until the middle of August according to the type of plant (early, middle, and late). This means that the average harvest lasts about a month and a half. The worker who will collect the fruit by hand should collect it in containers made of light material that he ties to his waist or neck, so that it works both comfortably and the collected fruits are better quality. Harvesting fruits should not start before they are fully ripe, which is an important factor affecting the value of your product in the market. When the fruits turn red from red to dark purple, they should be started after the taste has matured. Fruits collected before ripening continue to ripen after picking, but not at the desired quality. You should be careful not to collect the grains that did not occur while collecting fruits. If the fruits will be offered for fresh consumption, it will be more accurate to collect maximum 0.500 gr waterfalls in containers, which will provide better quality and longer shelf life. Although this fruit is hard, it is very sensitive to hot weather. If there are no shades in the garden (it is very costly), the harvest should be started in the western Black Sea and Marmara regions in the early hours of the morning and the harvest should not be done between 12-15 in the afternoon, because the fruit becomes soft and the shelf life is shortened during the hours when the temperature is at its peak. Even before leaving the garden, the fruits can spoil. Harvest should not be done in rainy weather. Blueberries collected during harvesting should be taken to the cold storage and kept pre-cooled immediately if possible. If not possible, they should be kept in relatively cool shade places in the garden. A worker collects an average of 25 kg of blueberries per day, which varies depending on the product’s abundance and shape.

Before establishing the blueberry garden, it should start its investment by considering the harvest time. During the harvest, the labor potential of the region, pre-cooling facilities, and the cold chain and logistics facilities for the transportation of harvested fruits to the market should be calculated in advance and the investment should be made in line with these values. The final of blueberry harvesting blueberry cultivation is the equivalent of all labor and the feast of this business.

Fighting Diseases and Pests

Combating diseases and pests in blueberry cultivation begins with choosing healthy and certified seedlings while establishing a garden. In this struggle, attention and patience are an important factor for success. In fact, this plant is highly resistant to diseases.

Fungal Diseases

The most common diseases are fungal diseases. The first of the most practical and precise methods of getting rid of diseases is the pruning of diseased seedlings. The pruned branches should be removed from the garden and burned in a remote place, and their destruction should be ensured. Despite this, if it is not possible to fight against diseases, fungicide should be applied in the garden. Various fungal diseases are among the most important diseases. The most familiar and practical measure that can be taken against this is beneficial in preventing this disease by ensuring that the bottom of the seedlings are ventilated and by making a garden facility where the seedlings can get sun as much as possible. Especially young shoots are very sensitive to such diseases.

Virus Diseases

The most difficult to combat diseases in the garden are virus diseases, unfortunately, results that cannot be compensated can be encountered. If success is not achieved in virus diseases, loss of seedlings in the garden is inevitable. There are gardens in the world that are completely destroyed due to the virus.

Pests

There are many pests in nature that can damage the plant. These can be listed as maggots, caterpillars, lice, insects, birds and rodents, respectively. Combating these pests is really difficult and you should be careful not to harm nature and plant while giving this fight. In particular, you should use pesticides that will not harm the environment and fruit. Often you need to observe the garden and sometimes intervene before it is late. Since birds love this fruit, they cause serious losses in the crop for this purpose. Thanks to this, you will protect the gardens against birds.