Backyard  Berry Plants

    Welcome to Our Nursery!

Certified Organic, potted blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry plants shipped from our family farm & nursery to you.

also new cultivars of

 Certified Organic Strawberry Plants
Available starting in late spring 2013

Use the link on the navigation bar to take you to the page all about strawberries, including cultivars, pricing, shipping, planting, and care information.
Also be sure to refresh your browser if you've visited our pages before, as we continually update availabilities and descriptions.

 

           

Organic Producer #: IN-G2171-11
Certified by Midwest Organic Services Association, Inc.
thorough the USDA NOP.
Link below to current certificate
2012-2013 Certificate
Valid to 11-7-2013

Certified Organically Grown Berry Plants
All of our plants and products are GMO-free

Our primary goal with this web based nursery is to provide our customers with high-quality, potted plants, and the insight needed to keep your berry plants thriving with great yields of unsprayed, organic fruit. Here is a little bit about our plants, and us, the family that grows them. Thank you for visiting our site, and if you have any questions as you look around, just send us an email.

All of our plants are shipped to you  potted, which means that they have a fully functional, undamaged root system, perhaps the most important part in the survival of a mail order plant.

Most all of the cultivars we sell we have grown and trialed for years on our farm in western Brown County, IN, following their performance through some of the toughest growing conditions to be found in the Midwest.  We are not only a nursery, but primarily a farm, dependent upon the success of our cultivars for fruit production and customer satisfaction.  We only stick with the varieties that perform well given the least amount of nurturing necessary.  

Our farm crops and plants are grown to certified organic standards, so they have to  yield a crop of high quality fruit without chemical sprays.  This means the cultivars we grow have proven themselves on our organic farm year after year.  Of course, the secret to success in organic growing of any kind is high diversity, both in variety and time of ripening.  Many years we see one cultivar stand out, but usually never the same cultivar every year (although a few are quite exceptional). 

  Our farm and nursery is all family run (Keith and Aimee, our two helpful, energetic daughters, and our 3 year old son, who's responsible for berry tasting), and we grow all the plants in our nursery from start to saleable specimen.  All of our plants have been developed without biotechnology, and all of the plants and products we sell are free of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO).
We do our best to pick only well formed plants to ship to you.  Also, the berry plants we ship are propagated from virus-free stock,  which means you get plants that are in top fitness.  (Below is a photo of an average sized Elizabeth blueberry plant at age 1.5 years from cutting). 

 

Here are some links to other sites that support interest in organic gardening, local and healthful food production, and agricultural heritage:

 

Click here to view Backyard Berry Plants rating with the Garden Watchdog!

 Bloomington Community Farmers Market

The Chilewoman
near Bloomington, IN

Getty's Creek Farm
in eastern Monroe County, IN

Martin Hollow Farm
in northeastern Lawrence County, IN

The South Central Indiana Local Growers Guild

Garden Harvest Supply
organic seeds, natural fertilizers, and more
based in Berne, IN


Fresh Start Growers
natural fertilizers, worm castings, plants
based in Louisville, KY

High Mowing Organic Seeds
100% certified organic products
Wolcott, VT
 
Sand Hill Preservation (Glen and Linda Drowns)
heirloom seeds, certified organic sweet potato slips,
heirloom poultry
based in Calamus, IA
 
Hazelbrake Farm Farmer's Market video spot by The Bloomington Herald-Times

Due to the nature of our work, we unfortunately do not have time for visitors wishing to look around and have questions answered.  We ask that if you'd like to talk with us in person about our plants and methods, visit us at the Bloomington Community Farmers Market in Bloomington (see link above) on Saturdays from 8AM to 1 PM from April through October. 
 We always bring a large selection of our plants, as well as plants we only sell locally.


Here are following links to organizations that, while not necessarily involved directly with organic agriculture, are nonetheless connected to the spirit of nurturance, mercy, and compassion that are the core of the organic spirit.



Whale & Dolphin Watch





Polar Bear International



Indiana Raptor Center, Nashville, IN




Doctors Without Borders



Heifer International



Mercy Corps

All of our plants are grown without the use of chemical pesticides, fungicides, or fertilizers.  We use alfalfa and kelp meal, worm castings, rock minerals, Neptune's Harvest fish hydrosylate, and compost as our fertilizers.

Our blueberry plants are potted and grown in a mixture of peat moss and shredded pine bark, two ingredients that provide just the right porosity and acidity in which blueberries thrive.  They are grown in 2.5 or 3 gallon containers, and average between a bushy 16" for the lowbush to a branched 36"+ for the highbush. All plants are well rooted when  shipped.

Our brambles are usually potted into 2 or 3 gallon pots for growing out, and only shipped when they have established a strong root system.  For our bramble plantings on the farm, I always pot our starts rather than directly transplanting them bare root.   This has given me near 100% survival, and reduced the amount of overall care needed.