Growing berries is one of the best things you can do for your health.
Fresh berries are nutritious and versatile and are a great way of encouraging your kids to get involved in the garden.
Here on the west coast of Ireland, we have a very limey and rocky garden but we have managed to work with it and sometimes around it.
The easiest berry to grow has been the raspberry and you can read about ours here.
I started with a few plants along the vegetable garden to make a raspberry hedge.
This worked very well – maybe too well as the fast travelling briar has meant that we now have more raspberry plants than we can use.
To be honest the raspberry plant can be a bit of a thug and I am forever pulling new plants out of my raised beds.
LOW MAINTENANCE
I use a simple nettle feed on my plants and only do this now and again – in fact, no matter how much I neglect them they still grow.
Here in watery Ireland, we have abundant blackberries growing along the sides of our roads – nobody looks after them.
If you only have room for pots or containers you can still grow berries. The easiest way is to choose according to your local climate – ask in your garden centre.
We have one raspberry growing in a pot that produces a nice little crop every year.
If you are growing in a pot you would need to use a large pot, good soil-based compost and you need to feed the plant more often.
Remember pots can dry out quickly so don’t forget to water.
We also grow gooseberries, loganberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants rhubarb and strawberries.
The best thing about growing berries is that it’s relatively easy and much cheaper than buying those small packets of berries from the supermarket.
Plus they don’t taste like plastic!
GROWING BERRIES FOR JAM
Thing is though – do you like making jam? do you like baking?
Not everybody does – maybe you just want enough fruit to pick and eat or maybe you want to freeze some to add to your morning porridge.
The best tip is only to grow what you know you will use as you can be faced with quite a glut of berries – all at the same time.
Either way, prepare to be very busy come harvest time or else make friends with someone who loves preserving and cooking.
Happy growing!
All the best
Grace
P.S. If you want to encourage your kids to love nature take a look below!
BALLYYAHOO – ENCOURAGE YOUR CHILDREN TO LOVE NATURE
As well as gardening I love to write – I used to write for Ireland’s RTE 1 children’s radio stories and still love writing for children.
My Ballyyahoo children’s books are my favourite personal project.
My aim is to share my love of nature with children.
Each book in the series is linked to the Ballyyahoo website with additional information and nature photographs.
There’s so much to love about nature – best of all it’s free!
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