How growing your own blueberries could save you a small fortune

Disaster. His Lordship is in a right old strop. He’s packed his bag and decamped to his man cave-basement. I wouldn’t mind, as I do rather enjoy having the bed to myself for a change, and the duvet. But he has gone too far! He’s only gone and taken my favourite tipple, Boutinot La Côte Sauvage, with him. Plus, he’s changed the Netflix password. Now, that is annoying.

I knew something was up when he locked himself in the study last Sunday morning for a couple of hours before emerging, red-faced, muttering under his breath, ‘Unbelievable’, ‘Mind-boggling’ and, most worrying of all, ‘Obscene amounts of money’. Sneaking on to his laptop while he was having a shower, I discovered that he had been going through our joint bank account and credit card statements online.

Gulp. Not good. Not good at all.

Kicking myself for not using my sole account more, I legged it to the allotment. What if he had finally worked out how much I actually spend at the hairdresser, keeping those pesky greys at bay? Or he’d spotted the ridiculously expensive monthly membership fee to that swanky gym I insisted I needed to join, but have only been to once? Or perhaps he had finally twigged that all those MAC transactions have nothing to do with raincoats…

Anyhow, I gave him a few hours to cool off (i.e. drink the Boutinot) and then anxiously headed home to face the music. I knocked on the basement door.

‘Blueberries. Bloody blueberries,’ he growled. ‘You’re supposed to be an experienced grow-your-owner these days, aren’t you? So why on earth are we spending a grand each year on blueberries?’

Stupefied, I quickly did the maths and realised that he wasn’t far off the mark. I love blueberries and get through about five or six punnets a week. So, at about £3 a punnet, I was indeed spending over £1000 a year on them. Oops.

Backing out of the room nervously, extremely relieved that he was still blissfully ignorant of my other spending patterns, I assured him I would immediately investigate how to grow blueberries at home, and quickly passed him another bottle of Boutinot.

So, if you think you might be a blueberry addict too, here’s how you can avoid any run-ins with the bank manager or a grumpy other half. Blueberries are relatively easy to look after and are perfectly happy growing in pots, as long as they are filled with ericaceous (lime-hating) compost. Go for a container that is at least 30 centimetres in diameter for young plants, then move your plant into a 50 cm container when it outgrows its first home. Make sure that the container has drainage holes and some crocking (e.g. small pieces of broken clay pots or gravel) at the bottom before filling it with compost.

Pop it in a sunny, sheltered spot to ensure you get berries with the richest flavour, deepest colour and highest antioxidant content. Water with rainwater wherever you can, and during the growing season feed your plants every month using a liquid fertiliser specially formulated for ericaceous plants.

Most blueberries are technically self-fertilising, but you will get a better crop if you plant them alongside other varieties. A good way to do this is to have three pots on the go containing an early-cropping (e.g. ‘Spartan’), a mid-cropping (e.g. ‘Duke’) and a late-cropping variety (e.g. ‘Nelson’). This will extend your harvest season as, while the blueberries will flower about the same time, their ripening time will be staggered. Yum!

Right, must dash. I’m off to my local MAC counter. Well, I am just about to save a grand a year…