Berry New Year

You may have seen some of your Recruiting Officer's past posts about gardening and Garden Organic etc.. If so you'll know I have been honing my veg growing skills for a while now, concentrating on staying as organic as possible and chiefly growing the stuff that's expensive to buy: peppers, tomatoes, courgettes and so on.

Now I have a good game plan for the veg I have promised myself that this year I will start to get a bit more serious about fruit. The strawberry crops have been reasonable and I am now hoping to build a fruit cage in time to start some raspberries and blackberries. I have fond memories of happy summers, as a child, spent picking strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries and the like from the garden.

I also have an established grape vine I am renovating and some more vines in containers I am hoping to plant out this year.

Blueberries and cranberries have become very popular in the UK in recent times - helped much, I'm sure, by the stories about their potential health benefits. In my fruity quest I was reminded that we have the most wonderful grower of blueberries right here in Dorset - The Dorset Blueberry Company. The owners, the Trehane family, introduced blueberries to the UK back in the last century.

And on Monday I spent a very jolly time having a look round their yard and buying some plants. They are in the middle of loads of work and not up to lots of visitors at the moment, building a new farm shop, tea room and all sorts. Not withstanding this they were really helpful and friendly, and the place should look smashing when they are done in a few months. You can also buy plants and an expanding range of other products from their online shop.

I now have some lovely little cranberry plants and two different blueberries - Herbert and Northblue. In the words of Dervla Kirwan, Herbert blueberries are not just blueberries, they are M&S blueberries - the Trehane's sell their crop to the supermarket from July to Sepetmber. I have much learning to do now about how to take care of them, but I can hardly wait for the results!

Back to veg again, briefly: the recent series gardener Carol Klein did on BBC2 called Grow Your Own Veg was smashing - she has such a passion for the subject. If you missed it and can catch a re-run I totally recommend it.