How to Grow-Your-Own: Fruit bushes

Fruit bushes are the great way to enjoy years of homegrown produce with little effort!

Most fruit bushes grow best in fertile, slightly acidic soils. Adding ericaceous compost to the planting hole can help. Blueberries in particular can be grown in pots where you can control what they grow in. It is a good idea to add sequestered iron in springtime. A feed of fish, blood and bone can be given once a year.

Different raspberry varieties ripen at different times of the summer and autumn, so if you are a fan of them make sure you plant a mix of early, late and autumn cropping varieties!

Fruits generally prefer to be in sunny spots, but some will still crop in light shade, including raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants, gooseberries and rhubarb.

Most fruit bushes should be left to grow for the first couple of years, and then pruned in the winters thereafter.