My wife and I are in the starting phases of a Pick-Your-Own Blueberry farm. We have some friends who have started one, and it is a traditional monoculture with several thousand blueberry plants, planted in a row, and that is what we were planning until I heard Paul on a podcast talking about permaculture.
I will give you a little information about our farm, and what we were planning on doing. We live on 13.5 acres and were going to plant 5 acres with several different varieties of high bush blueberry plants. We live just outside Kansas City and our soil and precipitation are not ideal for growing blueberries, but if you can get them to grow they are profitable in this area. There is one large and successful farm about 30 miles from us, and they have more business then they can deal with, so if we get one established we would have not problem moving the fruit.
So, my question for you is, if we were to choose a permaculture route we wouldn't be able to plant as many plants, and they would not be in the nice rows that are easy for customers to pick from and us to maintain, but we would be planting a wider variety of plants and probably have to irrigate less. The plan is that once the plants are established we will be able to do this full time, in addition to other things we have going, but if we will have fewer plants that might make it more difficult to do it full time.
I am not sure I have given enough information, so if clarification is needed please let me know.
Aaron
.png)
