Hey, look what I grew! Ok, so it doesn’t look like much, but these are the first few blueberries from my blueberry plant. I had them on my cereal and although they weren’t huge, they were really sweet and all the more delicious because I grew them myself! And frankly, if I can grow blueberries, then anyone can.
Breakfast blueberries!
Let me be clear; I’m not really a gardener. I don’t have the time to nurture my plants; I tend to just stick them in a pot or in a spare place in one of my rather weedy beds, and hope for the best.
However, on the advice of my mum (she’s a proper gardener), I wrapped my blueberry plant in some voile netting that I had left over from making a fancy dress outfit for my daughter in an attempt to keep the birds off any blueberries that might appear. They were probably put off as much by the ghoulish appearance of the bush as the inaccessiblity of the growing berries!
That’s a fine mesh you’ve got us into…
I simply draped the material around the bush and secured it with some clothes pegs – nothing fancy or remotely expensive or scientific. But it seemed to do the trick!
Voile netting and clothes pegs – the perfect bird deterrent
I started to notice that there were some blueberries on the plant towards the end of the summer and because of the hot weather, I did actually make sure that I watered the plant fairly regularly. I’d read on the Thompson & Morgan website that it was important to water blueberry plants near cropping time as it helps to ‘plump the berries’.
I’ve only got one plant so I haven’t had an enormous crop, but I can’t tell you what a pleasure it’s been to wander up the garden in the morning to pick a handful of delicious blueberries to have on my morning cereal. And the fact that they’re home-grown really does make them taste sweeter!
Plump, juicy blueberries
Sonia works at Thompson & Morgan in the role of press and communications officer. She is a self-proclaimed ‘reluctant’ gardener and is generally amazed if anything flourishes in her garden. Sonia has a ‘hands off’ approach to gardening and believes that this helps to encourage bees, butterflies and other wildlife. (That’s her excuse anyway!)
Recent Comments