When I moved the surviving blueberries and gooseberries downhill from the ultra-shady spot where they originally lived, I was a bit concerned that such mature bushes wouldn't survive being transplanted. So I pruned them harder than usual, removing perhaps a third of the top growth. Then I waited to see what would happen.

So far, so good. The plants old enough to bear fruit are indeed blooming copiously and the tender new leaves show no problems yet. It'll be awfully nice to have the fruit so close to the back door for daily picking, and I can already tell I'm going to get three times the pleasure despite cutting the planting size back by a factor of four. Now that's math I can get behind.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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