“I had an incident this year where I had a cluster of yellownecked caterpillars on one of my blueberry bushes. And I decided ‘I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to watch this.’”

Dave Cole runs Legacy Valley Berry Farm, a 5-acre blueberry pick-your-own outside of Asheville, NC. His regenerative growing practices had created exceptional plants, and his data-driven engineer’s mind was interested to observe how they would handle pests on their own, with no intervention. 

“There were about 100 of these caterpillars on the bush. On day one, they had eaten the top 18 inches of foliage. On the second day, they had clustered and were looking lethargic—they weren’t moving around much. The next day, they started looking kind of anemic, changing color. And on the fourth day, they were all on the ground dead.” 

Dave had been consistently measuring the brix of his blueberries at 24-26. For reference, Dr. Carey Reams defined 20 brix in blueberries as “excellent”—the highest tier. Dave’s hypothesis is that the sugar levels in the plant were so high that the caterpillars couldn’t digest the foliage and it killed them.

His practices were working. 

Dave grew up on a big farm in Northwest Ohio, and was eager to return to farm life after a career as a mechanical engineer. For his retirement “hobby,” Dave wanted to understand the complexities of the chemistry and ecosystems in the soil, and also wanted to grow healthy, chemical-free food for his community. He planted his first 350 blueberry bushes in 2021. Another 1000 went in the following year. 

Dave’s quest to understand the soil led him to AEA’s webinars, and he started using AEA products. 

He doesn’t spray anything on his blueberries except twice-a-year nutrition and microbial inoculants from AEA*—in spring and fall—which provides the nutrition for exceptional fruit set and encourages the plants’ hormonal shifts between vegetative and reproductive states. “Blueberries go through hormone changes. They give birth to the berries and then when the season’s over, they go through another hormone change. You have to be able to give them all the nutrition that they need to set and prepare for next year’s berries and the bud sets.” 

This year, his bushes are 3-4 years old, stand higher than 6 feet, and bore 442 gallons of fruit.

“I’m very, very meticulous as far as how the grounds are maintained and manicured and mowed. I’ve had people say to me, ‘I’ve never seen blueberries grown on a golf course before.’” But he’s even more meticulous when it comes to the soil. “What we’re doing beneath the soil is even more important than what we’re doing above it.” 

One of Dave’s core practices is using large amounts of compost. He gets local tree trimmers and utility companies to dump their woodchips on his farm, which he composts. He keeps his piles at 132-145°F, and turns them with a loader after a week to keep the process aerobic. 

The berry rows get deep mulching with 6-12″ of woodchip compost. This serves many purposes: 

1. It creates soil high in organic matter, which berries love. 
2. Compost retains water and prevents water-logging. This suits berries which like lots of moisture, but not wet feet.
3. Mulch moderates soil temperature. On days in the high 90s, Dave has measured soil temperature with a probe and found it stays at 72°F: right in the range where soil microbes thrive. 
4. Mulch suppresses weeds, and any weeds that do make it through the thick mulch layer are easily pullable from the soft compost, which Dave does daily on his morning walk through the berry patch. 

The results of Dave’s attention to the soil are impressive and tick every box: 

• Fruit load is up to 300-400 berries on a single branch (“they look like hanging grape clusters,” says Dave)
• Enormous size
• Flavor that has customers flocking back, eager for more. 

What matters most to Dave is the quality of the food he’s producing. “Probably 90% of our customers are young mothers with children. They know that it’s a safe place with clean food. I’ve had a lot of customers ask me if we’re organic. And I said, ‘We’re better than organic.’ . . . I try to educate my customers about our growing practices and what constitutes clean food. . . . And when they taste our berries, they say, ‘oh my gosh, we’ve never tasted blueberries this sweet and this good before.’” 

Serving his customers is what fuels Dave’s passion for producing healthy beyond-organic food. 

“At the end of the day, we’re all in the people business. I can grow the best berries in the world. But if I can’t sell them or if I can’t present it to the public in a way that is desirable, it’s not going to help anybody.” 

This year, Dave got a grant from NC State to plant 6,000 square feet of flowers as pollinator habitat. “One of the agreements was that I allow my customers to be able to take a pair of scissors and go cut a free bouquet of flowers as our thank you for coming to the farm. The smiles that we get are my paycheck. That’s what drives me to get out of bed every morning.”

* Dave especially recommends MacroPak, MicroPak, SeaStim, Rejuvenate, and Micro5000.