netting over blueberry bush

I was pleased to see that one of my blueberry bushes, the one farthest down hill, has berries. It escaped the gread mummy berry disease. Yeah! I covered it with a plastic netting called "cicada netting" that was available locally in Home Depot. It has small holes and I'm hoping will not tangle birds like the netting with larges holes.

Does anyone have better suggestions for blueberry netting?

today's garden work - clearing the blueberry patch

Today I cleared my blueberry patch. I pulled ferns and weeds and trimmed rhododendrons back to leave a cleared ring of about two feet around each bush. I dug up the prolific (and beautiful) native plox, piled it in a wheelbarrow and will relocate it tomorrow. The bushes look much better. If the berries start to ripen, I have bird netting ready to use.

I did the clearing because my new blueberries seem to have "mummy berry". Bummer. I was thinking the berry patch could have native ferns and wild flowers growing under the bushes. But last year, my bushes lost all their berries and this year the same seems to be happening. My bushes bloomed well this spring, fruit set, and now the young berries are shriveling up. Mummifying is a good description. I am reading this is caused by a fungus that propagates year to year through infected berries dropped on the ground and not swept away. It is agrivated by reduced air flow - from ferns and native flowers growing too close, I think. I'll gradually see how much clearing is needed.

blueberry patch

Also on my to-do list today is to water my blueberries. I added four new plants yesterday, all different. Three highbush (Blue Crop, Jersey, and Northland) and one lowbush (xxx). I mulched them in well and added HollyTone fertilizer. Since they're on a slope, I made a well at one side and a berm at the outer side of each plant to catch water. I have an drip irrigation kit spread out on my kitchen table now that I will install later this week so each plant gets watered well. The plants are in bud now. I'm not so concerned about a big crop of berries yet, I just want to get the plants established.

I started the patch in the fall of 2013 (1.5 yrs ago) with 8 highbush and 5 lowbush plants. The area is a bit on the shady side and is sloped. Id like to leave the wildflowers that are growing below them and keep a layer of chopped oak leaf mulch around them. I lost a couple bushes over the first winter and then last summer the remaining bushes did poorly, I think because I didn't tend them. They didn't produce many berries and I let the birds have what were there. This year I am planning to baby the plants; they are fertilized, sprayed (with dormant oil at bud break), mulched and hopefully I will keep up with watering. I have bird netting ready if they do produce berries this year.