MILTON-FREEWATER, Ore. — Clark and Lyla Lampson moved to Milton-Freewater, Ore., in 1992, the year Lyla finished her doctorate in economic entomology. They moved to an agricultural area so she could do pest control consulting for orchards.

They bought an apple orchard but the old trees were red delicious and needed to be taken out.

“We were wondering what else we could grow, and became interested in raising blueberries,” Clark said.

At that time few blueberries were grown east of the Cascades. Oregon blueberry farms were primarily in the Willamette Valley, and in Washington in the Puget Sound area.

“We were one of the first to grow blueberries here, and the first to grow them down on the desert,” he said.

Their farm is in a canyon on the edge of the valley. The Walla Walla River runs through the property.

“We planted our first bushes in 1994 from Fall Creek Nursery in the Willamette Valley — now one of the largest blueberry nurseries in the world,” Clark said. “We didn’t have any idea what might grow here because our winters are colder and summers are hotter. So we planted a variety of types on one acre — with every row something different — to see what would survive.”

As it turned out, nearly all the plants survived, so they gradually expanded until they had 15 acres of blueberries.

“In 1994, Oregon had fewer than 2,000 acres and Washington under 1,500 acres in blueberries, and almost nothing east of the Cascades,” he said.

There has been enormous growth in the blueberry industry in the Pacific Northwest; now Washington has nearly 20,000 acres, and Oregon around 16,000.

“We are exclusively U-pick. By 2010 we were producing about 8% of the total for Oregon U-pick farms, at about 80,000 pounds annually,” Clark said.

One reason he and Lyla planted blueberries was that apples have to be sprayed a lot, and blueberries generally didn’t need pesticides.

“Orchards were using a lot of harsh pesticides for apples — dealing with many pests, including codling moth. Lyla was able to start biological control of these moths with mating disruption, but that was after we no longer had apples,” Clark said. “She preferred to use natural methods to control insects.”

In regions with warmer, wetter conditions, people have to spray blueberries, since insect pests and fungi that grow on blueberries are not killed off with cold weather.

“The Willamette Valley gets a lot of rain, and blueberries are susceptible to many mildews and fungal infections. Growers there have to spray with fungicides and we don’t, because we are very dry,” Clark explained.

Unfortunately, an insect pest has come into the area — the spotted-wing drosophila (a type of fruit fly) that makes a worm in the blueberry. This fly is from Eurasia and came to California from Hawaii more than a 15 years ago. It made its way through fruit farms along Interstate 5, and for a while people didn’t think it would establish east of the Cascades because winters are cold, but it’s been in the area for about 10 years.

“We don’t spray, however. There are ways to monitor for it. These worms generally show up very late in the season. We simply close early if we find worms. At that point we have 5% or less of our crop left, so we haven’t had much loss. Some years we don’t see any flies. It all depends on how severe the winter was,” Clark said.

They’ve had as many as 30 varieties of blueberries but currently have mostly Duke, Reka, Darrow, Chandler, Bluegold, and Toro. Blueberry plants reach full maturity in about 8 years and are productive up to 20 years or so.

“We hire some help, primarily in winter for pruning, and hire a little help during picking season. We sometimes have 300 people here at a time to pick and need help to send people to the fields, check them out after they’ve picked berries, etc.,” Clark said.

The disadvantages of raising blueberries in eastern Oregon on the desert are that it requires irrigation, and berries can get sunburn problems because the weather is hotter.

“I have overhead sprinklers for cooling, along with drip irrigation. Some berry varieties are more susceptible to heat damage than others,” Clark said.

Another negative is that soils are alkaline, and blueberries do best in acidic soils, like forested areas, or what used to be forest.

“We have to acidify our soil. Our irrigation water is also a bit alkaline so I inject sulfuric acid into the drip system,” he said.