Soft fruit
Blueberry
Vaccinium corymbosum
Timings for your region
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Never sown — container-grown plants go straight into the bed.
The harvest times are for an established plant — the first crop comes after 1–2 years.
Plantingmid September – mid November
Harvestearly July – early September
Practical tip
The one sentence everything depends on: acid soil at pH 4 to 5, which means ericaceous compost — and rainwater to water it. In ordinary garden soil at pH 6 to 7 it yellows and dies slowly over years. That is what defeats most people.
Origin & history
The cultivated blueberry is not a bigger version of the bilberry that grows in our forests but a different species, from the bogs and swamp woods of eastern North America. Around 1910 Frederick Coville worked out why every earlier attempt at growing it had failed: the bush needs acid, peaty ground. With Elizabeth White he gathered wild bushes carrying large berries in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, and the first crop reached the market in 1916. The named varieties came to Germany in the 1930s and at first stayed where the ground suits them anyway — on the Lüneburg Heath.
Varieties
Compact varieties are the ones made for a tub: “Northsky” stays under a metre, “Northland” and “Reka” reach 1.2 to 1.5 metres and forgive a less than perfect compost. Do not let anyone talk you into “Sunshine Blue” — it is a southern, low-chill breeding line and comes through a German winter noticeably less well. For a bed the classic trio is “Duke” (early), “Bluecrop” (mid-season) and “Elliott” (very late); only that spread really fills the July-to-September picking window. Buy two- or three-year-old container plants and stand two different varieties side by side.
Care
Water decides it: the roots are fine, flat and have no root hairs, so they fetch nothing from any depth. In a tub, test with a finger daily from June to August; in a bed reckon on 15 to 20 litres per bush per week. Five centimetres of conifer bark mulch hold the moisture and work in your favour where the pH is concerned. Feed with an ericaceous fertiliser in March and again after flowering — no lime, no wood ash. Do not prune at all for the first three years; from the fourth, take the two oldest shoots out at the base in February, because the berries sit on one- and two-year-old wood.
What can go wrong
Without a net the crop belongs to the blackbirds, all of it, from the moment the first berries start to turn blue. Stretch a net of no more than 20 mm mesh tight over a frame instead of throwing it loosely over the bush — birds get caught in slack netting. If the youngest leaves go yellow while the veins stay dark green, the root zone has turned too limy; the only answer is repotting into ericaceous compost, bark mulch and rainwater and nothing else. From August, late varieties get spotted wing drosophila: soft berries collapsing on the bush. Pick over cleanly and often, clear windfalls, and if need be put 0.8 mm mesh over the ripening period.
Harvest, storage & kitchen
Blue does not mean ripe: only five to seven days after it colours does the berry come away by itself when you roll it with your thumb. A truss ripens unevenly, so pick over the bush every four or five days rather than stripping it once. Unwashed, spread in a shallow layer and loosely covered, the berries keep one to two weeks in the fridge; to freeze them, chill them on a tray first and they stay loose. Unlike the wild bilberry the cultivated berry has pale flesh and stains neither your fingers nor a cake batter. For jam it needs lemon or preserving sugar; on its own it sets poorly.
All timings are guide values for the given climate, not a guarantee. Weather, aspect and variety all have a say.