Bilberries require very acid soil. I think they are similar to heather in
that they can only take nutrient in via a microfungal population on their
roots.
They used to-maybe still grow on Waldridge Fell near where I lived many
years ago in County Durham. Altitude only about 500ft, rainfall c25ins year.
I think the main requirement is an impoverished peaty soil pH around 4.5.
I live in Devon now via Cheshire and am growing blueberries-billberries are
nice, but will be a lot of effort for not very much. The blueberries are in
a raised bed brick filled with peat /leaf mold and wood chippings. I feed
the blueberries with ericaceous fertiliser and mulch them heavily with wood
and bark chippings, which I found out later were recommended. I haven't
checked the pH. The underlying soil is a clay pH 6.5.
"Bigus" wrote in message
...
Hi

I am thinking of attempting to grow bilberries (not blueberries) in my
back
garden in Oxfordshire. I have a conveniently bricked-round, slightly
elevated, area in the back garden of a reasonable size and in a reasonable
part-shade/part-sun (depending on time of day) position. From picking
bilberries, they generally seem to grow on hills (not necessarily high
up),
often amongst heather and there is usually a kind of moss over the ground
aswell.
From this I would conclude that they like moist enviroments and I seem to
remember that heather likes a certain soil type, so does that mean
bilberries do aswell?
If they do require a special soil I was thinking I could dig out a couple
of
feet of the existing soil and replace it with a soil/compost they like,
but
would that be enough? Perhaps after diggin out the 2ft of soil I could put
an inch of concrete down and then put the favoured soil on top, so that
the
bilberry roots don't grow down into soil they don't like!

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Regards
Bigus