If you’re going to grow one thing that will be vastly superior to supermarket fruit and vegetables I recommend strawberries. Possibly my favourite fruit to eat, but only if home grown. Quite often when you eat them in a restaurant you are presented with a fine looking strawberry, completely lacking in flavour. And don’t get me started on why they leave the green bit (hull) on. The supermarket offerings are even worse, and in my opinion seem to be often on the point of going off when you buy them.
Home grown is a different matter. Really sweet tasty strawberries can be yours, if only for a short time each year.
Given that they are really tasty you won’t be surprised that everything else that lives in your garden will want to eat them, so you will need to keep them protected from birds, slugs, mice and even woodlouse.
If you are considering growing strawberries it may be worth experimenting a bit with different varieties. There seems no point in growing the same varieties that are on offer in the supermarkets, after all they are mainly grown for appearance and long shelf life, and not flavour. The main supermarket variety was up until recently, Elsanta, described by food writers as “dull”, “boring”, “tasteless”. Other varieties on offer in the supermarket can be Sonata, Malling Centenary and Malling Ace. The trouble is you cannot always tell what variety it is unless it is helpfully printed on the carton.
So what variety to grow? Ask for recommendations and everyone will tell you a different variety. The other problem is that the seed catalogues all seem to claim each strawberry variety is the sweetest, best tasting etc. So you might have to grow a few varieties to work out which one you like the best.
Over the years I have honed my preference to Gariguette. An old French variety, very early to crop, with medium size pointed fruits. They have very little hull, and a sweet tangy flavour. They are not a heavy cropper, but they make up for this with flavour.
This year I’m trying a relatively new variety, Snow White. As the name implies this is a white strawberry, which according to Suttons was the sweetest strawberry in their trials. Apparently it also has an aftertaste of pineapple!
I grow strawberries from runners. You need well drained soil. In the past I have grown through weed fabric, so covering the soil with the fabric and planting the strawberry runners in 10cm diameter holes cut in the fabric. This year I am growing the traditional way, no weed fabric, and straw around the plants. I was finding with the weed fabric the soil was drying out too much and the plants were struggling to survive. Once the fruits form from late May you will need to cover with netting to keep the birds off. A simple method of making a frame to support the netting is to hammer in short lengths of timber batten (60cm or so) so they stick 30-40cm out of the ground and then fixing thick garden wire to the tops of the battens using fencing staples (u shaped nails).
Photo – example of simple netting frame
Strawberry plants produce lots of new plants, called runners, after fruiting. These runners can be encouraged to root (to be honest they don’t require much encouragement!) and used to extend your strawberry empire. It’s also worth remembering that strawberry plants only last 3-4 years before the yields drop. Ideally you need to then start a new strawberry patch, preferably not in the same place (to minimise disease). So make sure you encourage a few runners to save on buying new plants.
One of the benefits of home grown strawberries is that if you end up with a glut and cannot eat them all, you can always make strawberry jam, or if you have lots strawberry wine.
My serving suggestion: Gariguette strawberries with a generous helping of Brinkworth Dairy cream. No sugar required.
Comments