 I'm Jacob Kelly. I'm a regional extension agent down in southwest Alabama. I'm housed in Mobile. And so we get to play around with citrus and all kinds of different fruit from the rest of you guys. But today I'm going to talk about blueberry site selection and preparation of that site. So hopefully you can see my screen. You see my mouse on my screen? Anybody in on your head? You see it? All right. Good. I'm going to be pointing at stuff as we move on if I can get my slide to move. There we go. All right. So number one thing I want to talk about is things you can consider before you select a slot site or before you get out there. Consider market number one. What's the blueberry market look like? What's going to be your market? Are you going to retail these as a you pick? Are you going to wholesale them? Mexico and South Florida can do some evergreen production as well as those folks down in South America. So they can get pretty much in any market they want to. We can't beat them to market where we're at. We just can't. So we've got to have a plan on hitting the market after Mexico and Florida and even Southeast Georgia. They've got southern high bush there and they get a little bit warmer than we tend to get or before we tend to get warm. And so they have a nice crop of blueberries a little bit ahead of us, not too much. But for wholesalers, you're going to need to find brokers or work directly with wholesalers to get your product sold. Wholesalers will only be able to sell their berries for $1.50, $1.80 to about $2.40 a pound. So they need to sell a bunch of berries. Whereas you pick, you can get away with selling your berries for $2 to $5 per pound, which is about $7 to $12 per gallon. So the price is better, but you're selling fewer berries. There's a little bit less labor with the you pick because you're getting your customer to come to you, but you've got to have a good location accessible to customers. And you'll have to encourage your customers to come see you at your market, which will be your blueberry field. Number two is money. How much money you want to invest? That's going to make an impact on which market you're going to be in smaller operations can afford to accept wholesale pricing. So they got a direct market. You pick won't need a harvester or a packhouse, which reduces costs significantly, but they'll still need to acquire land, prep that land, install irrigation, get spray equipment by the plants, by the fertilizer and all the other amendments and things like that. So there's going to be a startup costs either way, but depending on how much you're willing to put into it will kind of help you decide where you're going to end up. Number three is land. It's one of the most important. Do you have land already or do you need to lease land? Where am I going to put my operation? That can also help determine the size of your operation. Number four is labor. How am I going to get all this work done? You've got pruning, you've got harvest, those are the two big ones. Then you got the spray schedules. You've got to be out there managing these clients and manipulating them. So they react in the way that you want them to and that takes labor and so either you're going to have to get out there by yourself and do this by yourself or with family members or you're going to need to get local labor or if you're big enough you can investigate H2A labor. But the big question is how are you going to do all this work that's required? And number five is mindset. You're about to embark on a business venture. How serious are you wanting this to be? Is it going to be a hobby after retirement? Is this going to be how you make your living? How much of yourself are you willing to put into this? Do you enjoy being outside in the cold and in the heat? I was both in the same day in Alabama. How motivated are you? I myself can be very motivated when it's hot outside but as soon as you turn the temperature down to cold I'm done. I'm not getting out there. I don't like wearing pants. I don't like wearing jackets. I don't want to wear a toboggan. I hate being cold. So I'm a lot less motivated to do things when it's cold. So some of this winter pruning you're not going to catch me doing it. No, I'm going to wait for a warm day. But you need to think about what your mindset, what you're capable of, and what you feel would be the best option for you. And so before you get started spending a bunch of money, kind of keep these things in mind. But when we're selecting a slide, the I'll Deal Blueberry site, there's sites all over the state of Alabama. We have a pretty good area for growing blueberries, especially down here in South Alabama, but all over the state. We're looking for a site that is elevated with a slight slope. We want elevated land so that cool air and water can drain off our production site to prevent both the cool air and the water from settling within the orchard. These plants don't like wet feet. And they really don't like cold air, especially during bloom. We'd like to keep those flowers a little bit warmer than a freeze. This is especially true if you're in a site without well draining foils, or if you plan to grow early cultivars, they're more susceptible to these late spring frost events that we might have. If you can, you know, get three or four degrees by planting your plants on a slope, and all that cool air settles in the bottom, you might save your crop. So hill tops are going to be, southern facing slopes are going to be the most ideal location. Hill tops are going to get colder in the winter due to exposure. And they can also be very dry at times. Bottoms in low spots are going to hold water and that cold air. So we want to for sure avoid planting in low lying areas. This is one I always try to have home to my grandfather. He's convinced that you need to plant all your fruit trees in a creek bottom, because that's where the water is. And I tried to explain to him that was a terrible idea. But, you know, I'm just a young gun trying to make it in the world. He planted them, and we have not had a crop yet. So just try to avoid these low lying spots. Typically, we advise to avoid rope upland, a land that was previously growing corn, cotton, soybean, something like that. Because this land's been used to grow plants that need a really high pH. And it's going to cost you a significant amount of money to bring that pH back down to where you need it. These locations may be more likely to have a hard panned as well. Because of years of tillage and things like that, if they haven't broken up that hard panned, water is kind of kind of sits on that layer of soil. And it can cause all types of problems. So it needs to be avoided or broken through before you start manipulating your earth to amend it the way you need it. The ideal location would be a spot was maybe recently used for panned production. As long as it wasn't burned too much, the pH should be fine. Pines like acidic soils just like blueberries. And if the soil is already in the right range, that's one less input we need to spend money on. We want to know what the soil is like before we do anything to it. And ideally, before we purchase or lease the land, we'd want to know the attributes of the soil. So we're going to be looking to see if it's well drained. We want to know the soil type texture, the depth of that soil before you get to the parent material. So we've got our, you know, we'll call it topsoil. And then our parent material is usually when you start seeing it change colors. And I know up there in central Alabama, you dig down and you got this really nice topsoil and then you get to a clay layer. And that's what I'm talking about is the parent material. And you'll need a good water source nearby. This could be a lake or a pond that's fed by a stream. It could be well water. Water is important for these plants to grow and develop properly. And you need plenty of water to produce high quality blueberries. The amount of water you have will also help you determine the size of your irrigation and what type you have. More water is needed for micro irrigation than drip irrigation. So if you got a lot of water, you may consider some micro sprinklers. But if you don't have a lot of water, if you're only getting 200 gallons per hour or something like that, then you need to throw out the drip irrigation. And you may also need water for frost protection. And that's going to be a lot of water that you're putting out. You start putting that water out before it freezes and you don't turn it off until after the freeze. And the ice starts to melt. So that's a lot of water that you're throwing out there. So you'd have to be prepared to be able to throw that much water out. And that would only be necessary during bloom and especially with other high-brushed blueberries or early rabbit-eyed blueberries like climax or titan. And we also want a place that's got good sun exposure because sun exposure is critical to flower development. If these plants can't get full sun, they cannot have a full canopy of flowers. And the more flowers we have, the more fruiting potential we have. And the more fruit we have, the more money we can make. So if you found a site, we've got our site selected, we've got to come up with a plan. You can't just go out there and start sticking plants on the ground. We've got to have a plan. I like to draw things out. I'm a very visual person. I really need to see everything on paper so I can visualize it out on the property. And so we want to include every detail we can. We may need to plan our orchard around existing buildings, wells, ponds, power lines, other things that may be already present on the property fences that we don't necessarily need to move. Cell phone towers, people have all kinds of crazy stuff on their properties that you might need to work around or move. So we need to figure out a plan for those. We want to figure out row orientation, where roads are going to be, turn around, staging areas. I heard once from a wise blueberry grower that you need to spend about 10 times the amount of time planning and prepping for your orchard than you do for anything else, selecting plants, getting that equipment to grow, and all that irrigation you need to plan 10 times the amount before you start dealing with the actual plant material. So our land is our foundation. That's what we're going to grow our plants on, just like our houses. These plants need to have a strong and well-manicured foundation so that and it needs to be well thought out so that they can grow and produce these giant and wonderful tasting blueberries for us so that we can all make a little bit of money. Slope is going to be important. Short and steep slopes like the ones in this picture are a little too steep for production and may need to be manipulated to facilitate water runoff. If you have a slope this too steep and you plan on it, you're almost guaranteed to have issues with water runoff in one direction or another. You can see here that these rows were planted with the slope, which makes this site like a water slide. That water starts at the top of the hill and it gains speed and who knows how fast it's coming when it rolls off onto that road. What's not in the picture is I missed it. When I was taking the picture, there's a gully, a small little gully to the right hand side that's been requiring attention and patchwork and we want to try to avoid that. This grower wasn't here during the establishment of this orchard and we should see if he could go back in time to remedy this headache before it became a headache. There are many things we can do and I'll get into some of that a little bit later, but if you're in a situation like this, the best way to handle this is to before you ever even lay pipe for irrigation or purchase plants, you need to move that dirt around and decrease the slope if possible. You could also terrace this slope to slow down the water and allow it to drain through the soil and not the surface, not run along the surface. Or you can plant your rows perpendicular to the slope to kind of slow that water down as it hits each row. It's going to settle in and ideally it will slow down and percolate through the soil and not run off and carry any of your top soil or any of that stuff like that with it. But even if you do orient your rows perpendicular to a slope, you still may get a wash out. Here you can see that this grower has laid out concrete and rock to try to keep this situation from getting worse. If you have a spot that you know water will drain through, plan for it. That could be something as simple as putting berms up to kind of deflect that water and take it where you want it to go or laying a small concrete ditch with a retention pond at the bottom of it. I've seen that and it works effectively. The water does go racing down but it's on concrete and it lands in that pond and doesn't hurt anybody or erode any of the land and you're able to reapply that water to the orchard. And so you'll be able to get you know retain some of that water on the property which is always good. But we want to manage our water so that it goes where we want it to and not necessarily where it wants to even though it's a very strong force and hard to combat. As a rule of thumb for any crop not just blueberries but anything we want to start small and get the hang of growing our crop. I get calls all the time from people that have gone in and they planted five acres of blueberries and had never grown anything before in their life and they're running into a bunch of problems. You know that could have been prevented if one you call extension first remember folks we're free don't forget that your tax dollars pay for us to come out and consult you and help you and get you off on the right track so you can grow your crops and make money. So don't forget about us give us a call before you get crazy with it and start spending money and we might be able to save you a buck or two or at least put you off on the right the right foot so give us a call and start small you know it can be really overwhelming starting a farm and you know you put a lot of money into it and all that so we want to master our skills start small and then move forward with our operation. You'll want to plant you'll want to excuse me divide your production areas up before you really get into irrigation and soil amendments. You'll want to decide where irrigation and roads going to go later on but and things like that but these are you know two very different blueberry orchards the one on the left is a larger orchard and that mechanically harvest and on the right we have a smaller orchard that is a you pick on the front side and machine harvested on the back side and he's got a little bitty uh he's got a tractor and he pulls and over the row uh harvester and it works really well for him but those harvesters can be quite expensive so if you want to go that way it is a lot nice so you don't have to have labor or worry about you know people on your property but they're very expensive but both of these orchards have divided the orchard into different production areas lots of times these production areas will divide themselves because of planting times uh you may start out with one acre of blueberries and add more later on if you want to plant everything at once you're going to need to divide some of this out based on cultivars and in that area or that you want to plant in that area maybe irrigation zones the terrain space you have things like that uh you know and typically our main irrigation lines are going to run along or underneath our roads on the property and uh i'm i'm certain that neil covered some of that last week when he was talking about irrigation so i don't want to get deep into irrigation or certain plants or anything like that because we got other folks for that um but it's during this time you can decide to set aside space for staging areas and turnaround areas um and so let's take a little bit closer look at what i'm talking about this is that same picture of that orchard earlier um and this is what i mean when i say staging areas uh the first area we're going to talk about is the staging area for plant material depending on the size of your operation you may need a place to store plants before putting them in the ground and so you need to set up an area that looks like this ahead of time that's got uh that's ready for these plants when they get there the location is close to the road it's flat it's been supplied with overhead irrigation for the plants when they arrive so we can go ahead and start watering them um they're probably gonna be stressed uh just from the moving around and getting in and out of the truck and all the handling and things like that a little water will go a long way um and this area is big enough that a tractor trailer can get in here drop off the plants turn around and get out effectively um and it gives you room to put these plants out in a location within the orchard where these plants can hang out until you're ready to put them in the ground like you don't have to worry about putting them in a barn or you know in the way of anything they've got a designated location and after your initial planting exercise you can make this area a garden you can plant a pollinator area i know all the new gap stuff they're wanting a more pollinator habitat um that's a you know you could turn this location into a pollinator habitat or you could just leave it as a staging area for future endeavors um you know whatever uh meet your needs next we got another staging area uh up here on the north side and uh what i want to talk about with this area is having plenty of room to turn around any equipment you may be using so the smaller your equipment the less turnaround space you may need um but you need to be able to turn your harvests around your trucks your tractors with trailers on them and spray equipment and pruning equipment all that um you may need to move personnel around and things like that you've got to have space to turn around at the end of the rows uh or you might be backing up all of them or tearing something up or trying to make a turn too sharp and tearing up some irrigation i've seen it all and i've done a lot of it i've definitely torn up my fair share of irrigation with lawn mowers and not having enough place to turn around so think about that uh as you're planning this whatever you have you need to facilitate the turning of that equipment to set aside space for it and the last area i'm going to talk about is not far from that area uh it's a little bit bigger um you notice that last area um was different differently oriented this last one this grower used it um to part tractor trailers uh containing his pine bark mulch uh and this was his staging area for his pine bark so for larger operations you're it's going to be necessary to have room to store some of these amendments or things you might be using you might need to store a tractor trailer that's going to sit there until you empty it um and things like that and they need to have areas that they can drop off uh leave loads leave trailers turn around and get places and oh this place is uh you know just big enough for that it runs alongside the road not a turn around spot it's just an extra area out of the way of your production area you still bring a sprayer through there even if you had a big pile of mulch sitting there so the point is of all this is to allow your yourself some space if you can afford it um you know if you plan these uh in advance you won't have to uh you know try to clear some land after you've already got plants in the ground later on so it will cost you more to get into production the more you rush so if i want to do this next year it's going to cost me way more than if i just wait a couple years and just do it step by step so instead of growing organic matter uh you're going to be buying it by the truck load if you want it to happen fast um so try to take at least a year or two before you ever put plant blueberry plants in the ground to manage the site and the soil um because what you do now is going to impact your uh blueberry orchard for its entire life for its entire lifetime so we need to go ahead and set that foundation and get everybody off on uh you know at a good start um so that we can be profitable and not have to try to fix things or halfway do something later on this also gives you a lot opportunity to learn the land if you're leasing it new to it um and it's an opportunity to find those spots that may need a great adjustment you know even if you got a cover crop you uh some problem areas will pop up and you'll be able to notice those uh and you can adjust the grade or um you might realize all right this this spot's too wet uh you know even if it even it is on a slope but it's still too wet i can't plant here um so maybe you leave that that spot open uh and don't plant on it but remember cover cropping's your friend cover crops add much needed organic matter to your soil organic matter uh will help sandy soils hold hold more nutrients in water and help our heavy soils drain better um so it doesn't matter what kind of ground you have find a cover crop that meets your needs and stick it out there um to protect that ground you have uh you need more organic matter in your life especially since our state has less than one percent organic matter throughout the state i mean you're not going to find very much organic matter in our native soils and so we need to put it there so take your time if you can at about a year to six months before we order plants we need to do a soil test uh we need to have the soil in the correct pH range and that's one of the most important things we can do to um take care of our plants before we stick them in the ground is getting that pH right if the pH isn't right you'll lose not only time but you'll end up losing money uh plants may become stunted lack productivity and in some cases they can even die if they're in the wrong pH for too long so pH is one of the most important things out there you need to make sure it's correct if it's between you know getting the pH right or buying fertilizer get that pH right there's always nitrogen in the soil and there's always these nutrients they may be low but if that pH right is right the plant can break those um break those uh bonds of that nutrient on the soil colloid and utilize it so pH is very important um then we want to add organic matter if it's feasible pine bark or peat moss are great amendments to add when planting blueberries these are going to help with drainage and water hold capacity as well as nutrient retention uh and so plant your cover cover crop protect your investment and keep the soil where you need it i'm going to talk quickly about rows um ideally we plant everything within the rows oriented north to south um orient rows this way will help harvest more sunlight than orienting rows other directions however if you're planting on a slope um you're going to have to weigh your options here you might want to orient those rows perpendicular to that slope to slow down water as it rolls down the hill uh to a lower to lower ground so doing uh manipulating your rows you know can save you headache as far as water water runoff later on um we'll need to loosen up the soil at the planting uh areas so the plant roots have plenty of space to grow uh using a rotto chiller a spade uh disk something like that is going to help loosen up that soil for the planting area um and uh you also might want to add more pine bark or peat moss at this time um a little bit more more organic matters kind of uh one of your last few opportunities so make sure that peat moss is moist when you put it in the planting hole if it's dry and you put a clump in there and then plant the plant on top of it that peat moss is going to rob your plant of water for a little while until it uh is imbibed with water uh so you need to make sure you at least get a little moisture on that peat before uh you stick it in the ground a lot of times um you can do that as you're laying it out um and i'm not going to get into planting too much because chip's going to tell us everything when you're not wanted to know and more about that so i'm not going to dive into that too deep but we also want to plant our uh we also want to mount up our beds if we can to help with drainage uh away from our plants and to slow water running downhill six to 18 inches is adequate for bed height however if you're using a harvester uh or a mechanical harvester you may need to make sure that it can get through there and effectively do its job the bed's too tall it may it may cause problems with that harvester um mulching is essential for blueberry production uh and especially during establishment organic mulches are effectively barriers uh that add organic matter and hence plant growth cool the soil and warm temperatures uh help retain moisture and improve nutrient availability so mulching is critical to establish those young plants that could be choked out by weed competition i've seen this a lot of times where you go out and check out a farm they've got they have a problem with weeds and they don't have any kind of barrier uh down uh to prevent the weeds from coming up in their crop so it causes a lot of problems later on uh with production pine bark mulch is the industry standard uh in blueberry production in our state um this is because it's readily available and easy to find uh because the demand is high for pine bark we use it in nursery substrates and all kinds of stuff uh it can be anywhere from 20 to 35 dollars a yard and so we're talking i don't know $2,000 um for an 18-wheeler load and uh and that's just depending on the type of pine bark you get and where you're getting it from uh pecan shells are not commonly used in the industry but are a byproduct of the pecan industry and uh they usually don't have a home to go to so they sit out next to these shell implants uh or they dispose of them um so during my undergraduate uh studies i got the opportunity to take over a study that was managed by ashley hoppers who is a rock star extension agent in georgia and she was looking at to see if there was any negative impacts from using pecan shells as a pine bark substitute for mulch on blueberries long story short uh we found that using pecan shells was comparable to using pine bark mulch so pecan shells can cost anywhere from 25 dollars a truck load to free a truck load uh it just depends on where you get them from uh and how uh fast they need to get rid of them but most of our shellers will be happy for someone to come by and pick up their leftover shells um so that option's out there um organic mulches will have to be replenished uh sometimes annually as they decompose um but recently some georgia growers have been working with geotextile fabrics as mulch um and these mulches are expensive and you have to have a machine to put them out and all that um but they suppress weed really well and they last for several years and you don't have to replace them quite as often um you know 10 years i think is what everybody's getting out of them and so um that could be an option for you if that's what you want to do um i've got to hurry up because i'm running out of time but a mulch spreader can really save you some time in labor so i do recommend especially if you use an organic mulch is to invest in some kind of mulch spreader um you know that you can pull behind the tractor fill up with your mulch and it shoots it out of chute and you can have a guy there with a rake spreading everything out making it pretty um it's a good time saver if you've got the fun for it but real quick i want to talk about some little things uh that i'd never thought about until recently i took a trip um to wild fork blueberry and um they pointed some things out that i'd never even thought about before so i thought that all of you would like to learn about it uh so the image on the left is a power pole lined up perfectly between two roads um so this calls all kinds of problems because of where it's located what really should have happened here is these two roads should have been shortened a little bit so that there's plenty of space to facilitate equipment use sprayers turn around lawn mowers all that stuff um and uh because you're not going to move the power pole so maybe shorten those roads you're not going to lose uh you know that much money off of not planting you know tin plants or so um but if you look closely that power pole has been hit a few times whoops um on the right you see that uh they planted these plants right up on the side of the road and the ditch uh that runs alongside it so the weeds on the road side of the plants they got to be weeded hand pulled hand sprayed um you know you can't get your sprayer on that road to spray those weeds um not to mention the fact that the harvester's got a teeter on a small strip of land between that ditch and the blueberry plants that seems pretty sketchy to me I'd be real hesitant to mess around with it but you know these guys drive these harvesters all day every day so they're a little bit better at it than I am but what should have happened here is uh that this road should have been left out um this would have given adequate room for machinery um and agar's trying to interrupt me um but would have uh maybe provided another staging area or or pollinator production area whatever you want to use it or just because we can put plants there doesn't mean we always should all right so this is something to be aware of and I'd never even thought about it so it's brought to my attention um this picture is facing north so the east is on our right west is on our left we're looking um if you look really closely you can see that these plants are leaning to the left uh to the west um that's because on the east side of these plants there's a wood line and I'd say it's maybe 15 or 20 yards away from these blueberry plants maybe even more um but these plants are reaching for the sun that doesn't shine on them until late morning and so because of this um they have developed a swagger is what I'm going to call it but a leftward lean and so this may not seem like a big problem and it's not a huge one but it can cause issues with machine harvesting machine pruning especially the pruning one side of this plant the west side is going to get heavily pruned and that right side on the east side is hardly going to get pruned at all and so this is going to put most of your fruit on that west west side because new shoots are going to come out after your summer pruning uh and you're going to get a lot of fruit on that west side and it could overload that one side of your harvester uh not a big deal just something to be aware of and think about and here's another good one uh I really like this one uh look at this vial box right here yeah it's within the row it's in the row not out in the road or in between the rows um so this is done to keep that box safe and mainly the lid safe um from equipment heavy machinery trucks pickers lawnmowers all that stuff will shatter these lids and then you'll be left with a hole with a valve in it the vial box is out of the way easily accessible um and just where you need it to be uh out in that field so that's some food for thought just when you're thinking about planning these things out maybe think about putting those vial boxes within the row uh so you don't have to worry about running over them with equipment things like that but I've gone over my time but uh with that I'll open it up to any questions y'all might have about establishment uh or any general questions about blueberries if you got them