Blueberry planting in full swing in Fraser Valley

Posted by Sapan Behar

September 22, 2007

With the harvest over, or almost over, for most Fraser Valley blueberry farms, the focus has now shifted to preparing land for new planting. Fraser Valley farmers are getting ready to either replace other crops with blueberries or planting in fallow land.

Also see: Bare land vs. pre-planted blueberry farm

Proper land preparation is absolutely essential for a strong and vigorous blueberry field. In the Fraser Valley, blueberries are mostly planted from the second week of October to end of October. A slight raid is beneficial, however heavier rains are not.

Steps involved in preparing a new field vary depending on wether the field was fallow or was used to grow another crop. We are in the process of taking out the last 6 acres of raspberries and will be planting blueberries in their place. Our neighbour is also planning to plant about 10 acres of blueberries. She does not plan to mechanically harvest her blueberries and is planting in a field that has been fallow for a year. In her case, plowing the field installing irrigation lines is all that is needed.

Since we have raspberries in our field, we first have to destroy them. We started by spraying Roundup on the raspberries and on the weeds. This is for weed control and it takes about 2 to 3 weeks for Roundup to fully kill the raspberry plants.

Next step is to pull out all the poles in the field that are used to support the raspberries. Next step is to pull the trellis wires, the irrigation lines and then finally to plow the land to level it. We will also sub-soil the field since the use of tractors and mechanical harvesters have undoubtedly resulted in heavy compaction.

And since we will be mechanically harvesting, the last step would be to make small hills where the blueberry rows would be planted. This would result in the catcher plates of the harvester hugging the plant at the base and less fruit loss during the harvest.

-SB-

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