In praise of blueberries

Blueberry or bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) and I go back a long time, at least forty years.  Some of my earliest memories are of eating wild blueberries in the Tartra Mountains in the South of Poland.   Famished on a cold war diet (and we were only visiting mind), we gorged on the fresh fruits gleaned off the mountain side.  In my teenage years we found berries on Surrey heathland.  These were the wild species with fruit of just 5-10mm diameter.  It took ages to gather a bowl full.  In more recent years, our young children were fed blueberries whilst being carried up King Hereford’s Tump in the Black Mountains.  We also found blueberries all over the mountains of Assynt.  Looking for the next patch of berries lured the children up and then down mountains, in good humour.  Berries and clear mountain air now go hand in hand with the next generation.

Our first attempts at growing blueberries were in patio pots but with a North facing garden, the yields were low.  I think we celebrated just 10 berries in the first year.  These plants were the Highbush variety, derived from Vaccinum corymbosum, the American wild blueberry.  We moved house, purchased more bushes for the children to raid, though we have to stop them from picking unripe berries. 

We had long realised that plants in pots are a pain in the backside in terms of watering and feeding.  Our original plants looked thin and weedy, yielding few fruits.  So last autumn, I finally put into action our plan for a bed of super fruit outside the kitchen door.  A brick edge was laid to form a South facing bed about 1m wide by 5m in length.  There had been concrete slabs and granular stone over the area before, laid over the original topsoil.  This poor exhausted topsoil was skimmed off to a depth of 20cm or so and put to one side.  I then dug out 40cm depth of heavy clay subsoil, which went to the council recycling yard.  The topsoil was broken up and mixed with any organic matter I could get hold of:  from our own compost bins, old plant pots plus some locally made stuff.  I also added lots of horticultural grit, all to get the soil well drained and to try to modify the original clay nature of the soil (we’re on limestone).  The beds were left fallow over winter and planted this spring with our four blueberries: ‘Patriot’ x 2; ‘Rubel’; ’Duke’.

In winter I pruned out the oldest growth from the original two bushes and this has rejuvenated the plants splendidly. The blueberries in our garden are now providing dozens of fruit a day for eating.  The three varieties ripen at different times, which spread the yield through July and August.     In the long term we shall continue to added compost and grit and flower of sulphur to acidify the soil.

In my professional capacity, we use blueberries in planters on roof gardens and patios at elderly care homes and in primary schools.  The plants provide super-fruit ripening at the end of the summer term for children to pick plus there is glorious autumn colour.