Strawberries = summer in a mouthful!

Imagine this, you wake up and have some strawberries scattered on your morning cereal, or perhaps some home-made strawberry jam on your toast, you’ve then got some strawberries tucked in to your lunchbox for a healthy snack, and maybe for dessert you’ve got a strawberry tart or some strawberries and other fruit mixed with yoghurt and honey, or maybe it’s the weekend and you can add some strawberries to your sparkling wine or pimms.   These are proper strawberries too mind you, not those hothouse grown, hard, strawberry flavoured bullets, but proper sun-warmed, luscious, juicy fruit with maximum strawberry taste!  Sounds good? Then get growing!

With the clocks going forward at the weekend it means that summer is on the horizon, it will be here before we know it and in my mind, summer = strawberries. It might not seem like it with the suddenly darker mornings and the weather forecast for a week of wind and rain, but I thought it was still safe to expand the patch.
Nothing you buy in the supermarket will come close to a home grown strawberry.  Even better, you don’t need a lot of space or even a garden.  In fact, you could be better off growing them in one of those funny strawberry towers with the holes at strategic angles, or even hanging baskets, this way you don’t have to worry about protecting the fruit from the earth to prevent mouldy strawbs.  So a patio or even a window to hang window boxes out of will do the job nicely.

If you do grow them in containers you need to make sure that they don’t dry out, as pots do tend to dry out quicker, you will also need to figure out a way of bird-proofing, a light-weight net propped up on stakes should work well.

Husband building the strawberry cage last year, he will have to build a bigger one this year.

I’ve got a strawberry patch within my veggie patch, this takes only a wee bit more effort to make sure the strawberries stay mould free.  Last year I used weed matting to stop weeds coming through and to keep the fruit from direct contact with the ground.  This worked well until near the end of summer when the weed matting got a bit tired and I started getting a few mouldy strawberries.  I might do the same again this year but add some straw half way through the season to keep things going.  To keep the birds off I got husband to build a net cage and that worked perfectly.  With some booster feeds of strawberry food/fertiliser throughout the season that was pretty much all that was needed, pretty low effort expenditure for glorious reward!! 

 

With weed matting to keep the strawbs dry

Depending on the variety, strawberry plants last about 3 or 4 years before needing replacing and produce their best crop in their second year, so it is worth trying to keep them warm with straw when the cold weather arrives.  I’m not sure how successful I was with this bit, despite the mild winter, I’m hoping that they will start looking a bit perkier with some food and warmer weather!   I’ve added another 6 plants to my flock ... I want to have strawberries coming out of my ears this year (weird expression isn’t it?).

So if you like the idea of strawberries on tap in summer, now is a good time to get down to the garden centre, it’s a pretty good value for money thing to grow!  If that doesn’t sound good enough already then maybe the pic of my strawbs from last year will tempt you! 

A small but tasty early season harvest from last year

It's a shame I don't have a photo of my giant strawberries from later in the season, will have to try and get a photo this year :)