I’d like to plant some blueberries in 1’ deep 4x4 cedar beds filled with a mix of Canadian peat moss and native sandy soil. I am planning on beds rather than directly in the ground to prevent erosion because they will be on a slope.My soil ph is 4.5 (New England) but it is depleted of all nutrients, is a weedy sandy loam. I was thinking it would be good to put down hardware cloth because there are voles, and a layer of cardboard as a weed barrier. Will cardboard allow enough drainage? I haven’t grown blueberries before, so any other suggestions would be helpful, thanks!
1 Like
Not sure of the rest but cardboard definitely does not provide decent drainage at all… water likes to pool up on top of them. If you’re on a dry area of the world, they would love that during the hot months but if you’re in a wet spot for a good portion of the year like me… i would advise against cardboard for blueberries
3 Likes
One year I put cardboard down to stop the worlds most evil plant Trumpet Vine from suckering under my tomatoes and pepper plants and it held the water over the clayish bottom and made everything anaerobic growing mold with bad smell and no worms in sight. I still got good veggies but not as abundant as should have been. I won’t be doing that again.
1 Like
Thanks for confirming that, I figured it might be a bad idea. I will skip the cardboard and battle the weeds.
1 Like
If there is a coffee roaster near you, see if they’ll give you their burlap sacks. They may want to sell them to you cheap, but try asking for them for free first.
I’ve not had any problem using them as a weed barrier, and they’re free. They break down slowly, though, but we have sandy soil and are humid, so we take the organic matter we can get.
2 Likes
That’s a great idea! I will try that, thank you!!!
2 Likes
Not sure your stance on herbicides but one might help you tremendously here.
I generally don’t use any except one case which is 1-2 glyphosate treatments to quickly and effectively nuke an area before planting. It will save you a ton of pain later by not having to battle weeds indefinitely, which is especially important for shallow-rooted plants like blueberries.
If you’re interested, it’s best to make your own mix by buying concentrated glyphosate (41-50%) and watering it down so you have a 3% solution.
1 Like
Thanks for the suggestion. I know it works great, but I’d get a little paranoid using it where I want grow food.
4 Likes
In regards to glyphosate:
“In this context, GLY can decrease food resources, reducing the diversity of plants around the crop and, consequently, reducing pollen and nectar. It can also cause the contamination of forage bees when they go in search of resources to maintain the hive (Johnson, 2015). Lethal and sublethal effects of GLY have been observed to larvae and adults of several bee species (Blot et al., 2019; Motta et al., 2018; Nocelli et al., 2019; Pires et al., 2016; Ruiz-Toledo and Sánchez-Guillén, 2014; Tomé et al., 2020; Vázquez et al., 2018). Moreover, it is also shown that GLY impairs the cognitive capacities needed to navigate successfully back to the hive (Balbuena et al., 2015), as well as the sleep in honey bees (Vázquez et al., 2020a), indicating a negative effect of this herbicide on bee behavior. Thus, it is not surprising that GLY is now recognized as moderately toxic to bees (PPDB, 2020).”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969721004654#:~:text=Regarding%20bees%2C%20they%20are%20indubitably,et%20al.%2C%202018).
If you grow anything that flowers and needs pollination, i would not touch glyphosate due to the effect it has on the environment. Plus there are articles here and there with new studies suggesting high potential cancer risk associated with such product as well.
In my old-old neighborhood where it was cookie cutter homes in an hoa atmosphere, everyone and their mom sprayed weed killer. I rarely saw any bees or pollinators aside from the sphinx moth and a very few amount of honey bees that would always be dying by the time they got to the little oasis i made for the pollinators. And i would watch them only spray once a month at most but the effects of it was seemingly nonstop. Especially shortly after spraying. This is in regards to my neighbors across the street about 150 ft from me. No pesticides, just weed killer but the insects would act as if the dude was spraying pesticides shortly afterwards. The only thing immune were cucumber beetles and grasshoppers. Everything else died rather quickly and i would get pollinator in waves. Why is all of this relevant?
Blueberries need pollinators. Their pollen is microscopic, minimal, and sticky. It’s extremely hard to hand pollinate and the doing so results in poor yields from experience. If you do something that may cause an imbalance to the beneficial bugs, especially the ones you need, you’ll also receive the negative side effects of such as well.
Everyone says blueberries don’t do well in Colorado but rarely anyone will tell you why and the truth is, it’s because of the amount of people spraying in the neighborhoods where everyone congregates in and the spring peasized to ping pong ball hail once every week or so along with the spring winds. You can always easily fix the soil conditions but you can not fix things that can’t be undone very quickly like killing off a bunch of beneficial bugs at once or the weather.
1 Like
Thanks for sending. I understand the potential harms of herbicides and I would advise against using almost all of them, especially by the average homeowner or even many “professionals”.
You mentioned a few problems with what the average homeowner does and you are absolutely correct, and I will add to that list.
One thing that is often overlooked is the specific chemicals that are used, and how they are used. Most people have absolutely no clue what’s in the products they use (many have 4-5 active ingredients and most people couldn’t name a single one), they completely overspray, they spray into the air instead of in the ground, they spray on windy days, they wear zero protective equipment and instead wear shorts and flip flops, they hire lawn care companies to repeatedly blast their lawns with a smog of chemicals throughout the year, etc. These are the chemicals and techniques that I think are most dangerous. This is how we get pesticides in our air, soil, and waterways. Also, mentioned you witnessed only sprays of herbicides and not insecticides, but I would bet good money both were being sprayed in your neighborhood (and every neighborhood), much more frequently than monthly, and in large quantities. I’ve witnessed lawn care companies spraying a smog I could see and smell from 100 feet away, and I actually approached one applicator to ask what was were the ingredients they were using and they straight up said “I don’t know.” That is illegal, by the way—pesticide applicators are legally required to know exactly what they are spraying.
Glyphosate, when applied correctly, has very minimal impact. You can apply it in a way that has virtually no drift—use a low-pressure sprayer with coarse droplets sprayed close to the ground on a day with little to no wind, rather than high pressure/fine mist sprayed far and wide on a windy day. This allows you to be very targeted. Glyphosate also has a short half life and breaks down quickly once it contacts soil, reducing chances of runoff or interacting with the water table. @JenMass This is why I’m not worried about killing some weeds and then building a raised bed on top for edible gardening. By the time you’re harvesting blueberries from this location, months or years will have passed by. What I will say is, it’s best to mow the area down first and then wait for an inch or two of regrowth before spraying. I see people spraying weeds that are 5 feet tall and that causes them to have to spray into the air, which is obviously bad.
Another technique that I much prefer when possible for larger herbaceous plants or invasive shrubs and trees is “cutting and painting” since this is very targeted and has zero drift. I even eradicate invasive orange daylilies this way—cut a few inches above ground and paint open wound with herbicide concentrate. Some people would recommend digging them out, but you can easily miss them and you massively disturb your soil this way, which disrupts the soil ecosystem and invites even more weeds.
I won’t doubt the latest research on toxicity to bees and would love to see even more research being conducted, but again I think technique and timing of application is extremely important. Native insects and animals are extremely important to me. I’ve converted almost all of my property from lawn and invasive plants to native plant gardens and I see more life existing on my property than I ever thought possible.
One last note I’ll make is that some plants cannot even be removed without herbicide (the very invasive Lesser Celandine comes to mind), unless you have an excavator and would like to dig hundreds of square feet, 6+ inches deep into the soil. And even then you might miss some roots/bulbs and now you have to take your removed soil somewhere and process it to kill everything that was in it.
There is no perfect approach to removing weeds/invasive plants, but I just wanted to share some things to consider.
2 Likes
@Melon and @daniel.crespo, you both have good points and I appreciate you taking the time to share valuable the info.
Someone suggested burlap. I am going to try that, cover the area with pine mulch, and will pull any stubborn weeds that find their way through 
3 Likes
That bottle of glyphosate may go up a tad after yesterday…
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/bayer-hit-with-2-bln-roundup-verdict-us-state-georgia-cancer-case-2025-03-22/
2 Likes
I wouldn’t use carboard in a blueberry bed, but i use it in my garden to sheet mulch along with straw. Always breaks down fine for me no issue. Never had a mold issue with it either. I just poke a hole where I intend to plant, add some compost, and plant.
1 Like