Edible Garden - Strawberries

I enjoy the strawberry season which is from June through to August, although nowadays you can buy strawberries most days of the year. However, compared to fresh, organically grown berries from your own garden, they are not worth eating. Most commercially produced strawberries are grown in vast polytunnels and are sprayed every other day with an astonishing array of fungicides, insecticides and herbicides so that they can be packaged to look glossy and uniform on the supermarket shelf. Unfortuntely the packaging has more taste than the fruit and the chemical residues are appaling. As a result they are little more than junk fruit.

The answer is to grow them yourself. Then you can have the ultimate luxury of a bowl of fresh berries still warm from the sun (chilling them takes away all the taste) splashed with good organic cream.  They like rich soil but grow well in containers filled with potting compost. The best time of the year to plant strawberries is in August and September to allow the roots to develop for a crop the following summer. If you grow strawberries in soil it is a good idea to put straw or shredded paper under and around them to keep the plants off the ground. It is also essential to net them as blackbirds love them as much as humans and will eat them as soon as any redness is visible.

Strawberries are prone to viral infection and produce their best harvests in the first and second year after planting, so after three years it is best to dig them up and compost them and not to replant strawberries in the same spot for another three years. However, after fruting, each plant will produce runners with plantlets running along their length. I use fencing staples to pin the first of these plantlets, so that it roots into the soil and after a few weeks can be cut free from the parent, lifted and replanted in a fresh site. This guarantees a constant supply of fresh plants for free and maintains a supply of delicious strawberries that really taste of summer and are not polluted with chemicals.

June 24th 2004