Strawberries

[squeaky]

I have talked my OH into growing strawberries for me! Having been through all the catalogues, I am still unsure as to which variety/varieties to go for. Could I please have your advice on the best tasting/sweetest varieties.
Also, any advice for growing the strawberries would be much appreciated. Others on our allotments seem to grow them on earthed-up mounds. What does this actually do, please?
I live in the south.

[Ellendra]

My experience has always been that the big extra-sweet varieties are great for fresh eating, but the tiny tart ones are better with cream/milk and sugar. Since my favorite way to eat berries is with milk and sugar the way some people eat their breakfast cereal, I'm going to be planting alpine strawberries hopefully this year. Never met anyone who was growing the alpines, so this will be an experiment.

One thing I would suggest is to mulch the plants well after they come up in the spring. The berries often get heavy enough to pull the stems down, and you don't want mud covered berries!

(A little dirt is one thing, a blob of mud with a stem sticking out of it is completely different, which is how the berries from my parents' strawberry patch looked last year.)

PS: This is an international forum, the south of what?

[Millymollymandy]

It does help to know your location as strawberry (and all other fruit) varieties will be different depending on which country you are in!

I don't know about planting on mounds (never seen or heard of that before) but as well as mulching with straw to keep the strawbs clean and the moisture in, I put up bird netting or the birds will be in there eating them all!

[squeaky]

Good point re location!! I am in South East England.
Re the mounds, I shall ask at my allotments and see if anybody has any pearls of wisdom! Perhaps one person put their strawberries on mounds, and then everyone else copied, thinking it must be the right thing to do!

[Millymollymandy]

I can only imagine you might do that if your soil is very waterlogged and planting on a mound helps to increase drainage.

By the way please could you fill in your location in your profile (User Control Panel) - that's what we keep asking people to do to avoid these constant problems with where you live/what to grow and when etc. Everything, of course, depends where you live!

[Odsox]

Regarding "mounds", this was how they used to grow field strawberries in the south east before the advent of the polytunnel.
The reason for that is that the strawberry crown needs to be slightly above soil level to prevent the whole plant rotting in wet summers, also it makes surrounding the plant with straw easier and the fruit ripens a bit earlier.
The mounds are only a few inches high, not like potatoes.

[squeaky]

Location now completed.
Thank you Odsox for your comments re mounds. That certainly makes sense and as we have clay soil I will go for that method.
Many thanks.

[Millymollymandy]

Thank you Squeaky and thanks for the explanation Odsox!

[Deorccwen]

Don't know if this helps at all, but in the Hebrides they used to use a system of rows of slightly raised beds with dips in between (i.e. a raised row, with a sunken row beside it then another raised row etc). Food plants were planted only on the raised rows. This helped reduce waterlogging, and also helped to protect the plants from cold and frost as the cold air sank into the dips between the rows of plants. These beds were made by digging each sunken row and simply piling the earth directly onto the undug ground alongside it to make a raised row.

[dave45]

FWIW in the North of England last year, strawberries did Ok despite the lousy summer, but the birds still got too many of them.... you watch a particularly big one get just ripe (that'll be ready tomorrow!) tomorrow comes and its gone.. the little bu&&ers know when they are ripe too. I chucked loose plastic netting over mine.. I don't think that is good enough... I haven't seen them do it, but I think they can eat a strawb THROUGH the netting.

[pumpy]

FWIW in the North of England last year, strawberries did Ok despite the lousy summer, but the birds still got too many of them.... you watch a particularly big one get just ripe (that'll be ready tomorrow!) tomorrow comes and its gone.. the little bu&&ers know when they are ripe too. I chucked loose plastic netting over mine.. I don't think that is good enough... I haven't seen them do it, but I think they can eat a strawb THROUGH the netting.

..........pssssst! Wanna buy a cat?

[Millymollymandy]

Oh they can definitely eat through the netting (particularly the blackbirds) if you just put it loosely over the plants! You need to make a cage so that the netting is away from the plants! I do find it a real pain every couple of days having to lift the netting which is weighed down at the edges with big stones but if I didn't then I probably wouldn't have many strawbs!

One thing I do have to be careful about is small birds getting caught in the netting or inside the net which I've found once or twice. One time it was a female blackcap under the netting over my raspberries - nothing wrong with her but another little bird got actually caught up in the strawberry netting and I took quite a while to untangle it and I think it had an injured leg although it did fly off in the end. It's a dilemma.

[sleepyowl]

Temptation produce sweet fruit & are a good maincrop variety which give you a good crop in the summer. Ostara are a good perpetual strawberry, which is slightly heavier cropping than most perpetuals & has good tasting fruit from may to the first frosts

[Millymollymandy]

Ostara are a common variety in France too. Now if you can get Gariguette, which are a Breton variety, they are very early non remontant ones. I have just seen some flowers on mine already and will be eating them in May and June.

[cmiddleton]

I can recommend Sarian F1, grown from seed. The seed was fussy to start with, but worth the effort for this hybrid. They are vigorous and prolific strawberry producers all year and put out lots of runners late summer. I had new plants and runners setting fruit in October and November, but it was too cold for them to ripen, outdoors in Aberdeenshire!