We went out to our greenhouses today and started on some of our spring gardening. As is often the case, God used it as a teaching experience with these two of His children.

In preparation of getting started, we had gone to the local farm supply store and purchased 11 bags of soil. We planed to add it in with our soil from the year before, just to give that little extra boost. We knew we would need a lot more soil to get all our plants done but that is all we could afford this payday. So today we took those 11 bags out to the greenhouses.

We started in our Octagon with the strawberries we needed to transplant. We added some of the new soil with the other amendments and older soil and prepped the new bed for those plant. That took a couple of bags of our new soil. We set two more bags aside for some other plants in the Octagon. Then we carried the rest out to the seasonal greenhouse to do the blueberries.

We had seven bags to do our all of our blueberries. We were moving them all from five gallon into 20 gallon containers so we knew we wouldn’t have enough soil but decided we would go as far with those as we could with what we had.

I started feeling like I needed to do a bit of research on blueberries first to make sure we were doing it all right. We had already figured out they would do better if we moved them into larger containers but weren’t sure what else we might need to do. These bushes were several years old and were still only producing a few handfuls of blueberries on each one. We knew we needed to change something.

The more I researched, the more I realized how much organic material they needed as well as far more acidic soil than the mix we had bought at the store.

Everything we read said pine straw and oak leaves were some of the best organic material you could use for blueberries. We live in middle Georgia, so we have both of those in spades on our property. We went around and filled the containers up about halfway with the organic material. Then went back and added some of our old soil and started testing the concoction we were making. We began to realize that the soil we had bought was almost the exact opposite of what the blueberries needed. So we kept working in the organic materials, old dirt and stuff that we already had on hand. Before long the containers were testing perfect for blueberries.

We stared planting and checking our soil as we went along and soon enough we were done planting all the blueberry bushes in their nice new 20 gallon homes and still had all seven bags of our purchased soil that we could now use for other plants that would appreciate it more.

I realized at that moment, God was once again teaching us about sustainability and how He does and will provide our needs if we just listen and work with Him instead of against Him. It was like the story of the loaves and fishes. The more we worked, the more we listened, the more we planted, the more soil we had. I would say it was also like the story of the never ending bottle of oil, but I will save that story and see what happens once we start transplanting the olive trees! Stay tuned for God’s next lesson we learn and keep listening for His wise advice in your daily affairs. If you don’t hear him for some reason, take a walk in the garden. He is always there!