Country Enterprise - growing blueberries or bilberries to sell in punnets or bake into pies, cheesecake, jams, muffins.

<P> To be quite different, why not grow the great American favourite: blueberries?</P><P> The plants are in fact related to our native blueberry and, like their wild ancestor, like a peaty soil. As they are very ornamental, they can be grown in a herbaceous border or as part of a decorative plan in the soft fruit area. </P><P>Dig plenty of peat into the ground before planting and, for once, do not apply manure. Blueberries berries fruit on the tip of the last season's growth so the aim in pruning is to remove old stems and encourage the fruiting ones. They are quite hardy and disease-free. Apply a general fertiliser in March and when harvest-time comes, be prepared to go repeatedly over the bush removing fruit as it ripens. </P><P>As there are few blueberries cultivated in Britain, you may find the simplest market is to put them into punnets and sell them to retailers. They also make excellent jam and as our American cousins claim, excellent pies. They go extremely well with cheesecake. </P><P ALIGN=RIGHT> <A HREF=fruit11.htm TARGET=mainframe STYLE="text-decoration: none">growing soft fruit</A></P>