How to Grow a Blueberry Plant? – Best Varieties in the UK

Last Updated on April 4, 2024 by Real Men Sow

As payday is on the horizon, I was pondering treating myself to planting a nice blueberry bush. Ailsa is half American, and having spent time there as a child, is dead keen on the little blue fruit.

Grow Two Blueberry Plant Varieties Together

Mark also suggested growing more than one variety together to increase yields, and I decided to mix an early and a late variety. This should hopefully leave me sprinkling blueberries on my morning cereal all summer. However, being a blueberry novice, I needed more help and turned to the wonders of the World Wide Web.

Plant the Blueberry Bushes in Acidic Soil

The Grow Your Own Forum was full of good advice, as usual. The first nugget of info was that blueberries like acidic soil, so growing them in a pot or container is the best idea. A great tip from the forum is to heavily mulch the bushes in pine needles every year.

Grow Early and Late Fruiting Blueberry Varieties

Early Fruiting

For the early crop, Duke was recommended for its prolific June cropping, although the fruits were said to be smaller, but given that the bushes are likely to be in my garden rather than the allotment, I preferred the idea of more decorative Patriot and Earliblue. These bushes produce attractive scented white flowers in spring and fiery red autumn foliage. Bung them in a nice pot, and it sounds like they’d double up as a pretty feature.

Late Fruiting

For late fruiters, forum favorites were Darrow, which produces large fruits that are difficult for the blackbirds to nick; and Chandler, another big berried bush.

Over on Twitter, Ozarkblue was heartily recommended by Karl, author of Blackgates Garden World, for its abundant fruits. Karl likes this variety so much, he’s got five bushes!

If I’m feeling like really splashing the cash, I could also squeeze a midseason bush in, like Bluecrop. This is another variety that produces white flowers and colourful foliage.

Where to Buy Blueberry Bushes?

Thompson & Morgan stock a full-season collection of three bushes in 1.5l containers. They cost £29.99, but I’ll have to wait a year before getting some fruit.

The best tip I got, however, was from Michelle, of Veg to Veg. She put me on to the Dorset Blueberry Company, who sell three-year-old, ready-to-crop bushes at really reasonable prices.

Their website is full of useful tips and information, and if you don’t know exactly what you’re after, you can let them choose the bushes for you. At the moment, two bushes are on offer at £30, with Jennifer Trehane’s new book on blueberries thrown in free for good measure.

After much deliberation, I’m going to plump for the early Patriot, and Ozarkblue for my latest, since it got such a glowing report from Karl.

It could take five or so years (and some TLC) before I get bumper harvests, but fruit bushes and trees are a long term investment. With some luck, I will pick a few berries this summer, and of course, being in containers we’ll get to take our bushes with us when we finally get that little smallholding we dream of!

Real Men Sow
Real Men Sow

Hello, I’m Pete and I’m currently based in the west of Scotland, in a small place called Rosneath, where I’m exploring my garden adventures. I personally started gardening around 6 years ago and initially, I started out by growing my favorite fruits and berries, such as strawberries, Raspberries & Gooseberries. Since then I’ve added a lot of vegetables and working closely with my neighbor, it’s been a lot of fun.

8 thoughts on “How to Grow a Blueberry Plant? – Best Varieties in the UK”

  1. Just discovered your blog via Blotanical (which I find is a great way of finding new blogs, as opposed to the ones that have been around for ages). I like what I see, and I have to admire your obvious enthusiasm! I’ll be visiting again…

    I have four Blueberry plants growing in pots. They are of at least 3 varieties (one was a no-name freebie), so I get that Summer-long supply you mention (though in modest quantities!)

  2. Hi Mark, thanks for introducing yourself. I’m new to Blotanical, but am looking forward to having a poke around and finding some good blogs.

    Since I posted, lots of people have said they’ve got lots of blueberry bushes – beginning to think I’m selling myself short!

    Looking forward to checking out your blog in more detail. The veg garden looks stunning.

  3. If you don’t have acidic soil and have to grow blueberries in pots then you’ll also have to collect rainwater for them as your tap water is very likely to be too alkaline. And they like a constant supply of water – they are not fond of dry roots!

  4. Thanks Emma, that’s really useful to know. Time for another water butt!

    An attractive yet efficient water gathering system, now there’s a challenge…

  5. Hello! I found your blog recently and am enjoying it very much. I was thinking of getting blueberry bushes myself – I liked your mention of the Dorset blueberry company. But I can’t get their website to work – I tried a few days ago and again today. I’m hoping they are still trading as a company, does anyone know? thanks.

  6. Hi Maria,

    Thanks for your comment. Glad you like the blog!

    I can’t get the Blueberry Company website to load either. They’re part of Trehane Nursery (http://www.trehanenursery.co.uk), which is still up and running. It does say they’re experiencing high demand at the mo though. Trehane are very long established.

    I’ll let you know when my bushes arrive.

  7. Hi Jono,
    thanks for the reply, and for looking into this! I didn’t know they were part of Trehane Nursery so that’s useful.

    cheers,

  8. It looks like my first potato enmirepext failed. Started from store bought potatoes that started growing while in the basement, they grew quite fast once I put them into soil. I suspect the problem was water related. In between a handful of other pots I wasn’t able to monitor them too well. I’ll give it another try, the speed they grew at before they died was encouraging.

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