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Growing your own strawberries |
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Page 1 of 2 Simon Eade's guide to growing your own strawberries
May is one of the busiest times of the year with plenty to do in the
vegetable garden. If like me the thought of home grown English
strawberries is enough to make your mouth water then now is the time to
get to work. If you‘re starting afresh then you can find a full range
of plants in any good garden centre. For that perfect summer flavour I
can recommend ‘Cambridge Favorite’, a king amongst strawberries.
To ensure a good yield remove any runners before they start to creep
along the ground as leaving them will only sap energy from existing
plants. However if you need new plants for next year, pinching off the
flowers from a couple of selected plants will encourage shoots and
runners instead. Remove them carefully from parent plants in early
autumn and pot them on separately using John Innis No 1 or No 2.
As the fruit develops their weight will cause them to drop to the
ground, but before this happens it’s important to cover the surrounding
soil with straw or black plastic. This prevents the fruit from rotting
on the soil. In fact it’s from the traditional use of straw that
strawberries got their name. Where plastic is used, punch small holes
in the plastic to help drainage and to stop water pooling under the
fruit.
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