Blueberry Containers

We had a moderately dramatic day.

This morning we found this guy in the chicken yard:

I spoke to Animal Control and the officer told me to keep an eye on it and if it was still there tomorrow give them a call. It has hung out all day looking very unwell, and this evening when I went out to check on it, it was having convulsions, so I doubt it will still be alive tomorrow morning. It looks like it was poisoned, which kind of sucks. After the chickens go to bed I may go check on it again; if it's dead I'll pull it out of the yard so they don't eat it and possibly get poisoned (chickens are vicious hunters and would totally eat a dead skunk).

In the meantime, at lunchtime I got delivery of some new barrel planters:

Last week I bought a couple blueberry bushes from Sonoma Swamp Blues, who have been selling off their bushes as they get ready to close their farm. A friend trucked them down to me because we no longer have a vehicle that can handle full-sized blueberry bushes, and I decided to plant them in barrel containers. (Blueberries can do poorly in containers if you aren't on top of watering and feeding them, and keeping the soil acidic enough; also they prefer a really large container, hence the barrel planters.)

There's a guy in Oakland who will deliver barrel planters around the East Bay (website here), so I ordered several for the blueberries and also some for the citrus trees we are going to move into containers. These are old wine barrels that he buys, cuts in half, and drills drainage holes into. What I loved was that he would deliver them; with the current car situation I would have made several trips to get enough planters for our plans. They aren't cheap, per se, but they are good quality barrels and the price feels pretty reasonable to me. Also, they smell like wine so they lend a certain boozy sophistication to the garden.

Over the weekend I bought potting soil, and basically as soon as the planters arrived today I planted the blueberries in them and gave them a good drink. (The citrus will have to wait a little because there's other things going on in those parts of the yard.)

posted by ayse on 05/05/21