While there are multiple theories about what caused Carolina bays, there’s much less debate over the next phase of North Carolina’s emergence as a blueberry-producing state.īlueberries were first domesticated early last century, when New Jersey farmers selected bushes out of the wild, planted them in rows, and produced a commercial crop. Other theories posited include ice fragments from a meteor impact in the Hudson River basin, peat fires, winds blowing in the same direction over hundreds of years, and even the tail-fanning of a huge prehistoric fish. While it’s fun - and a little scary - to think of a massive heavenly body striking the planet an eon or so back, there’s now considerable debate about whether it really happened. In the 1950s, geologist William Prouty put forth the theory that the bays were created by a meteor or comet colliding with the Earth more than 12,000 years ago. “Over the years the organic matter grew up and water settled in there and that combination created this swampy, mucky soil,” Seitz said. Some still hold water (notably Lake Waccamaw in Columbus County) and some are completely dried up, but many became pocosins with deep, acidic, sandy peat soil. “They all have this white sand berm on the southeast end as though a shower of large objects hit the earth at an angle. “You look at the satellite view or the aerial view of those bays and they are all oriented in the same direction,” Cline said. There are hundreds of them, all oriented in a northwest-to-southeast direction, usually with a sand rim on the southeast edge. “We’ve got pockets of it in Pender County.”Ĭarolina bays are most numerous in Bladen County. “The ideal soil for blueberries is this black, sandy loam,” he said. Seitz is the director of the Extension center in Pender County, where the annual North Carolina Blueberry Festival is held. Mark Seitz keeps a jar of the perfect-for-blueberries soil in a jar on a bookshelf in his office. They grow really well without a lot of added soil amendments, unlike in other areas where lots of pine bark or other organic amendments have to be added to the soil in order to grow blueberries successfully.” Blueberries have thrived since being introduced to North Carolina as a commercial crop in 1936. “In the early days, a lot of the fields weren’t even irrigated because they have a water table so close to the surface. The pH is naturally low, and blueberries grow well there without growers having to do a lot of amending of the soil prior to planting,” said Cline, who is based at the Horticultural Crops Research Station in Castle Hayne. “The naturally-occurring blueberry sites in Bladen and nearby counties are sand-based, high-organic soils – white sand and black organic matter. The reason is simple: the highly acidic soil there is perfect for growing blueberries. Neighboring Pender is next with 2,100, followed by Sampson (1,000) and Duplin (500). Nearly 6,000 of the 10,000 planted acres are in Bladen County. And chances are it was grown in a Carolina bay, which, according to a popular theory, was formed by a meteor or comet slamming into the planet thousands of years ago.Ībout 90% of the state’s commercial crop is harvested in southeastern North Carolina.

If that delicious North Carolina blueberry came from a grocery store, chances are it came from the southeastern part of the state. The third tier, the smallest tier, is backyard gardeners who grow their own.” “You have a big commercial industry placing berries in retail stores, and then you’ve also got folks who have an acre or two, selling pick-your-own fruit from smaller plantings all around the state. “It’s a very accessible crop because it exists at several levels,” said Bill Cline, who helps producers big and small grow the best possible crop in his role as NC State Extension blueberry specialist.

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