Stawberries

I love growing strawberries because there is something very indulgent about plucking a ripe berry and sinking my teeth into its sweet, succulent flesh that has been warmed by the sun.  Home grown strawberries taste so much better than many of the shop bought varieties and it feels extravagant to enjoy fresh strawberries with yogurt and cereal every day.  I have a top tip though:  don't store them in the fridge because the cold kills the flavour.  We store ours in the pantry but they never last long!

Strawberries are easy to grow if you follow a few basic rules.  They need their crowns just above soil level to prevent water logging.  The fruits need lots of sun to ripen them so I position the plants in the sunniest spot in the garden.  They are very happy in hanging baskets and tubs which is good if you are short of space and it makes picking easier too.  The fruits do need to be kept clean and dry and since we grow most of ours in a raised bed we use strawberry mats.  Straw is cheaper but is a perfect slug hotel.

The birds also love the fruits – why wouldn’t they?  If you want some fruit for yourself, netting is essential though hanging baskets are usually okay.  However, make sure the nets are not too fine because strawberries need insects for pollination.  If you find malformed fruits then remember to help things along with a paintbrush next year, to ensure a healthy crop of fruits.

Strawberry plants need replacing every three years as they tend to lose their vigour and can develop viruses if grown in the same spot for too long.   I rotate the plants very easily and cheaply by propagating new plants from the existing ones.   Layering is the easiest way of doing this and involves setting small pots of moist compost around the plants and laying the runners across them, weighted down with stones.  Within two or three weeks, there are new leaves and I snip the umbilical cord to allow son or daughter of strawberry plant to grow away independently.   The new plants do not produce a very big crop for a year or so but taking runners every year means there are always mature plants available.

We like to grow a perpetual or everbearer strawberry (Flamenco does well at Springfield) though the description is misleading.  These plants do fruit for longer but we generally have a burst of activity in July and then a long flush later in the summer and into the autumn.  This year we are introducing Honeoye which is an early variety, Cambridge for the mid-season and Florence which is a later variety.  I am sure I have mixed up all the plants but they will have to get along together, the best they can!  I am not sure if they will cross-pollinate but we shall have see.

Last weekend I prepared a new strawberry bed which is well conditioned with compost and planted out the new plants which I had overwintered in the greenhouse.  Strawberries fruit better if they are subjected to a cold snap so I have brought them outside in early spring so they can catch some of the later frosts.  I find I lose more plants if I leave them in the raised beds over winter, I think, because we can have cold, wet soil.

  
For their novelty value we have some wild or woodland strawberries which are perennial and come up in a big mound every year.  The fruits are tiny and deep red in colour.  They have more seeds than flesh and are also time consuming to harvest.  However, for tiny fruits they have a punchy flavour and nice with cream cheese or goat’s cheese or added to a fruit salad for interest.

Some troughs of older strawberries were in need of a spring tidy up so I up ended them and set to work only to find all three riddled with the distinctive white grubs all gardeners hate.  There were hundreds of vine weevils. I broke apart all the plants and spread the compost on a sheet of plastic with the white invaders exposed.  By the time I had eaten a quick lunch myself, there were some very fat birds snoozing after their own lunch and all the grubs had thankfully disappeared.  (The leader of the flock was a cheeky Robin, I think.)  I have disposed of the strawberry plants which is a pity but we have a garden full of happy birds who have dined in style.  That can’t be bad, can it?