Oh Tesco you fibber!!

Daphne you should come oop North in August when the blueberries are in abundance on the hills. They are not bitter at all.

Blueberries grow very well in Angus/Perthshire as do many kinds of soft fruit - best raspberries in the world, or am I biased?

daphne blueberrie are a bit like raspberries inasmuch a some varieties are sweet and others not.

.pompa have to go now, but interested in tub growing if you can give me a indication of size

jane, I just don't like them! To be honest, I don't really look at them. I assumed they came from the US, because they're native there and I'm also very cynical of 'superfoods'. I don't eat fruit if it's not sweet enough to eat without added sugar and every time I've eaten a blueberry, it's been bitter and I've found it difficult not to spit it out. In any case, I rarely eat any fruit not grown in the UK, including bananas, pineapples, grapes, melons, etc. I'm diabetic and many tropical fruits are basically sugar in water.

Back on topic, I don't know what people expect if they want to buy all varieties of fruit 12 months a year.

I have a single blueberry bush in my garden which is heavy clay.
I mulch it with our own compost and give it several doses a year of Miracid, the miracle-gro version for ericaceous plants.
It's been there for nearly 30 years and the last few years has produced enough fruit for several pies.
Daphne blueberries are not exclusively American. They grow wild on the heather moors of northern England. One of my childhood memories is the whinberry pies my grandmother used to make. She bought the berries during a short season from local shops but they came from the Lancashire moorlands.
I don't understand your rant against American farmers. Most of the imported blueberries I see in the shops come from Europe, some from Chile but I've never seen any from the US.

Pompa, I'm in North Essex too and my soil is chalk. Even if I did grow blueberries (and I can't because my garden is minute), I wouldn't eat them, because I think they taste horrible!

I'm in the West Midlands now pompa - how big are your tubs. ( If that's nkt too personal a question )

Anya, goosberry sawfly attacks mine most years and if not treated can strip them of all foliage within days. Far too many to hand pick.

I do use fine net over my brassicas, but the little blighters seem to get in somewhere, only needs a leaf to touch the net. I hand pick if there are not too many, but they often multiply when we are on holiday.

Don't know where you are, but I am in North Essex and grow bluberries.

They must have acid soil ( I grow in tubs of Levington Ericaceous compost). They must be watered with rain water if you are in a hard water area, they need a lot of water and fed with an ericaceous feed.
You should also grow 3 varieties as they are not self fertile.

I can't grow blueberries.

Pompa we grow our brassicas under cover (fleece supported by canes or cloches) and carrots in wooden sided thingies to avoid carrot fly. We don't have a problem with gooseberry caterpillars round here. Our problems are pigeons (we hand CDs on string) and in 2013 rats ate our sweetcorn until we wrapped them in tin foil ( and very odd they looked too)

Oh yes, and blueberries, very easy to grow in England, as is most soft fruit.

We too grow many of our own vegetables Pompa

I lived in a sandy-soil area for years and had an allotment. An old gent told us his secret and we followed that successfully. Each year he allowed one bed to lie fallow. Into that he put all his vegetable and frui peelings, grass cuttings, shredded paper from Spring until autumn. This rotted down over the 6 months an added the fibre and bulk that sandy soils lack. He also dug in and spent compost left over from growing seeds. Then in the autumn he used that bed to have a bonfire and burn anything leftover from his garden. He then dug in the ash which added more minerals. Finally he grew green manure on it over the winter months and dug that in come Spring.

Over the course of our tenure our allotment turned from a yellowy soil which didn't hold water or nutrients to good quality loam.

We now are trying to deal with a water-logged clay soil, where we've moved to but using the same technique on that and slowly, we are getting a better soil.

We never use pesticides though as I fear for the local population of birds and hedgehogs.

I don't have too much trouble tracing where my veg comes from. broad beans are on the left, strawberries on the right etc.

I use fish/blood/bone as a general fertiliser, which gives me a slow release balanced PNK and a systemic pesticide when essential on brassicas and gooseberries which can both be decimated by caterpillars. If I could get farmyard manure, I would use it (even farmyard manure is likely to contain traces of the antibiotics etc that are used on live stock.), I cannot produce enough garden compost for my plot and the horse manure that I can get is far too light to be of use on sandy soil.

I would be interested to know what organic growers use on brassicas and gooseberries to combat cabbage white caterpillars and gooseberry sawfly caterpillars.
BTW I have eaten so called "Organic" veg and find my own has a better flavour most of the time, but I grow varieties noted for flavour rather than yield. eg, alpine strawberries, far too low a yield to be commercial.

The farmer is correct!

A couple of days ago, I was given a small bowl of fruit when I went into Tesco. I was told it was '??? Farms' brand, which was replacing the Tesco Value range. I have to say that the fruit was very tasty, especially the apple. However there was also a strawberry in the bowl (quite sweet and tasty) and I asked where it was grown, because it's obviously not the UK strawberry growing season. I was told it had been grown on a small farm in Morocco.

I don't usually buy fruit out of season (apart from NZ apples), because I think UK grown fruit tastes better, is usually cheaper and I care about air miles. I'm not a huge fan of foreign strawberries, so don't buy them, but if people insist on eating strawberries in Winter, I think they have to expect them to be grown abroad. And don't get me started on blueberries! I think they taste horrible, are poor value and I object to having them foisted on me because American farmers want to make more profit. (Rant over)

There was a very vociferous farmer on the radio complaining that Tesco was selling stuff grown in Morocco and making it look as if it was coming from a UK farm.
Lots of companies claim something is "home made" when it patently is not.
Also "wild" is bandied about e.g. wild berries. I am not convinced.

I don't know if organic food is intrinsically more nutritious or tastier, but I suspect that eating food that has been treated with all sorts of pesticides, preservatives, etc. etc. is unlikely to be good for a person's health. Anyway, we buy whatever organic food is available. We may be foolish to do so, but I'll take that risk.

You carry on thinking that, Pompa, and I'll carry on eating organic.
I just mentioned it because it's easy to trace where it comes from in the shops.

If you do not eat organic food, you cannot know if the flavour is affected.

Don't get me going on "Organic", biggest con of our age, I grow most of our veg, but wouldn't consider not using chemical fertiliser (have to with sandy soil as nutrients leach out) or occasional pesticides.
I am sure that the flavour is not affected by non organic feeds.

tio.uk/index.shtml

This is where Tesco gets a lot of its organic food.
I know about it because my grandson wanted to learn about how food gets from farm to shop, so we looked for organic carrots.

Our local butcher says where his meat comes from, however, the driver that delivers his meat is a friend on mine and I would take the claims with a pinch of salt. Much prefer to buy from a local farm that butchers his own beasts.

Although Tesco used to put on their meat: 'This is Fred Bloggs, one of our farmers etc etc etc'
So you didn't know if the meat or chicken was from Fred Bloggs or not.

At least the local butcher sells meat from his father's farm (or so he says)

Thanks jalima
ab perhaps it's an online thing. I bought a bag of Maris piper potatoes too and it says they were grown in Lincs too, by Paul Langford.

I did my Tesco on line ordering today, all their potatoes with names of places are no longer available , just tesco potatoes remain

Here's Neil and his team janea

www.thclements.co.uk/our-team/