Good enough to eat - Cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) (From Worcester News)

Good enough to eat - Cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon)

12:25pm Monday 23rd October 2006 in Gardening

We may only think of cranberries at Christmas, but you could be harvesting them now, in time to make the delicious jellies and sauces which go so well with festive fare. Grown commercially, the cranberry bogs in America are deliberately flooded to make harvesting easier - but you don't need a bog or soggy soil to thrive. You need well-drained acidic soil to grow these ground hugging, heather-like plants which provide autumn colour and dainty flowers. They have a suckering habit and thrive in boggy peat or sand soils with a high water table.

They can be grown as ground cover in the shrub border.