Growing Blueberries
One thing I think both Katie and I agreed on very quickly when we took on the fruit cage was that we wanted to grow our own blueberries. We decided it was an absolute must and so set about reading and exploring what type of blueberry would suit us best. Who knew there were so many?!!
The bushes take a while to mature so I think we will have to be patient but hopefully we will have some fruit this year. We chose a trio of blueberry bushes from D T Brown. We decided on the long cropping blueberry plant collection and that was for two reasons really. One is they cropped through the whole season but two they were much bigger plants than we had been able to find anywhere else. Arriving in 2lts pots!
The trio consists of one Draper, an early to mid season bush. It can be highly productive and is said to be extremely resistant to common diseases. As beginners we decided robust and disease resistant plants were definitely the way forward. It will fruit from late July until mid August.
The second of the trio is Bluecrop, this is possibly the most widely grown blueberry in the world. It is a bush that produces fruit in the mid season and with a promise of a high yield of fruits. The berries are powder blue in colour and not as sweet as some other varieties. And in the autumn we can look forward to the foliage turning to a beautiful deep red.
The third in the trio is Aurora. Aurora is a late cropping variety, fruiting from late August through September. This produces a dark colour berry. So hopefully we will have fruit throughout the season between the three bushes.
The soil on Lottie is really not the best and is very chalky and there are many many flints. Blueberries don’t like chalk. They prefer a much more acidic soil, the type that Azaleas and Rhododendrons thrive in. So Katie and I decided we will grow them in pots of acidic type soil, this does of course mean that we will need to keep the pots well watered as the acidic soil in the pots drain well.
The other thing Blueberries prefer is rain water and not tap water. Although there are troughs at the Allotments these are fed from the mains. So we have put a few plastic drums around the gardens to collect rainwater for the blueberry bushes. So the bushes have arrived and are now potted up in a bigger pot and we have put them in the cage. We have fed them with a little fish blood and bone fertiliser, so fingers crossed that we can later in the season reap the fruits of our labour from the care and watering of our blueberry trio!
Apart from eating blueberries fresh and blueberry muffins, which I’m in no doubt we will share a recipe of later on. Do you have a favourite blueberry recipe? Katie and I would love to hear from you if you do
