Acid pain

Well, it turns out that our dear friend the blueberry is a bit of a diva.


If you mention to a gardener that you are growing blueberries, they will without fail say 'have you got some ericaceous compost?' Got myself some what now?

Apparently blueberries will only leave their dressing room if given acidic soil, which is what this specially formulated blueberry juice is. However, having tasted the good stuff, blueberries appear to have spread the word that they will only perform with said compost. So we all have to fork out some extra to fill our containers with the Evian of compost just to get some sweet notes at a point of their choosing. And they're twice the price of blackcurrants just to get them in the first place.

My budding blackcurrant

"But blueberries are a superfood" i hear you warble. Yeah and they seem to know it. Some of us feel you can get a much richer rewarding experience from growing your humble blackcurrant in normal compost, a more giving fruit, sincere and honest.


It worries me, that I've gone and bought a blueberry plant and just followed the instructions of others. Granted, one shouldn't reinvent the fruit tree but there has to be scope to experiment I feel, and from that experimenting comes new knowledge.


So I've planted up the blueberry as advised, but on one condition. I'm going to buy a second plant.


I'll use normal compost and place it somewhere different in the garden to see what the conditions will do to it. To some this may appear like fruit tree cruelty, to others pure stubbornness (and you'd be right), foolish in these straightened times.


But I also do it for a greater purpose - to either come to a common understanding with the blueberry that if I am to invest in its outlandish demands it must flourish my breakfast bowl with twice the juicy blue sweet bombs of the other.  Or failing that I will have to expose it for the manipulative berry that I suspect it is

For now, all you get is leaves...

I'm not even sure I like them.

Second coming

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Which is why so many of us drink coffee for breakfast.  Nothing like a good drug to create the illusion that all is good in body and mind.

In the London rat race, I was a convert to the wonderful Monmouth coffee shop on the corner of Borough Market. I was back there recently, two years after my last appearance, resurrected in their ultra efficient queuing system. And they remembered me! Unheard of in London, I was thrilled.

But then I paused, and wondered, does that make me like the old drunk at the bar; pub and punter dependent on each other? Not valued but quietly mocked and pitied for my dependency?

Well, no more. I have porridge. All those oats and milk, I actually have long lasting energy in the morning.  Porridge is now a strange necessity; once you have it regularly you can't live a morning without it and energy wise kicks a croissant dans les noisettes.  However it doesn't look, sound or even taste inspiring on its own. It really is just mushy cardboard.

But. If you grow your own fruit then ha! you can get all creative on it's papery ass.

Earlier in spring I was chucking in the raspberries with abandon, all strong and intense. But as the harvest died away I had to turn elsewhere. To my blackcurrants. I had never eaten a fresh whole blackcurrant before. It's worth the investment in pot, canes and compost for that moment alone.

In porridge though it's like fireworks, a popping candy type experience as you get constant unexpected hits of flavour changing with each chew (yes I chew porridge, and once bit my tongue so badly I couldn't speak properly for a fortnight).

I currently (no pun intended) have enough to last a few weeks of gurt lush breakfasts, as they say in Brizzle. But to my surprise and hope this morning, my raspberry plant appears to be gearing itself up for a fresh batch.

Hallelujah

Life is like a box of chocolates...

Usually Quality Street:

Bright colours, something for everyone, attractive on paper, a sugary, nutty, fruity rush when you bite into it you but as you dwell on it you can't help wondering if it tasted better when you were a kid.

Sure it offers variety but in the passing years 'quality' and 'variety' have become so bland as to be meaningless; positive words detached from your senses but fixed in your brain. And when such words become meaningless you become a marketing guru's plaything. They can even make up associated words. Ribena is now full of 'Berryness'.

When I began growing, I just wanted to grow things like potatoes, beans, onions. That they come in varieties was lost on me at first. You rarely see varieties stocked for the discerning shopper. As far as I was aware, a cucumber is a cucumber.

Yet the garden centres are stocked with choice, and that's before you go online. I took two approaches this year. For runner beans I went on instinct, for blackcurrants I researched properly

Runner beans have striking but small colourful flowers. Last year mine were orange, this year I plumed for one red, one white.  I planted them by separate canes in a big container in the hope that they would spiral up towards each other in a burst of contrast. Today the first flowers appeared and I'm actually excited about this experiment:

When I chose my blackcurrants I made a conscious decision on which variety to choose. I read widely and from 5 varieties, plumped for Ben Hope - deemed to be an excellent grower with heavy yields.  But there was choice over the height, the taste, the amount of crop, the timing of the crop. It was actually quite empowering to choose what was right for me. And this is where varieties coax you deeper into the murky world of gardening...before you know it you'll be a veg snob.

All I'll say for now is that we'd all better keep this in check. Any garden snobs out there, take a good look at yourself. Why not try something new? Challenge yourself. Hell, why not walk into a garden centre and pick your next blackcurrant plant purely on Berryness