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| Go greener |
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| With a growing number of gardeners eschewing chemicals in favour of natural alternatives, we can suggest some effective products from our organic gardening selection |
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| Relax and refresh |
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| Good food freshly prepared daily, aromatic coffee, chilled wine and a grassy play area for the children. What more could you need? |
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| Food heaven |
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| Our Farm Shop is heaven for food lovers! Delicious handmade food, top quality groceries, fresh fruit and vegetables and stylish cookware and gifts. |
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| The Discovery Walk |
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| As thousands of daffodils herald the spring, stroll or stride around our Walk while the youngsters enjoy the Nature Trail |
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Strawberry fayre
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| Thursday, 8th May 2008 |
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IN THE GARDEN WITH PETA MARSHALL
Here’s a question for you. Which is the only fruit to have its seeds on the ‘outside’? The strawberry of course.
And that’s not the only strange thing about it. It’s a fruit, yet it’s a member of the rose family. Some people grow strawberries for their flowers rather than their fruits. Lots of people eat the berries with pepper.
And of course they’re famous – and famously expensive – for being sold and eaten by the crowds at Wimbledon each year.
And the best news of all is that they are amazingly simple to grow. The gardeners of yesteryear grew them in the kitchen gardens of big country houses. But today we know that they can be extremely successful in flower borders, greenhouses, growing-bags, pots of all shapes and even hanging baskets, where their tantalizing fruits hang over the sides.
Arguably they are more successful in hanging baskets than anywhere else, for two reasons. First, growing plants in the ground usually means that as the berries swell and gain weight they will often rest on the soil, and this can soon cause them to rot, as well as getting dirty in the process. Second, the berries are more accessible to slugs, which love them. A basket hung-on-high will avoid both of these problems, but you will have to remember that watering the plants will be a daily occurrence during the summer months, and feeding the plants weekly is a good idea, as strawberries are hungry little things.
With early, mid-summer, late, perpetual and alpine strawberries providing crops from mid-June until October, these fruits can be enjoyed for months!
So, how should they be planted? First off, always plant certified virus-free strawberries in rich soil in a sheltered, sunny site.
Plants will thrive on most soils, but you will have to tailor your cultivation depending on the type of soil you have. For example, on sandy soils they’ll need regular watering during drought. On clay soils the beds should be slightly raised or grit forked in to improve drainage.
But whichever soil you have, it is important to remove perennial weeds and dig in plenty of well-rotted organic matter, such as homemade compost, before planting.
Set plants out at 18in. (45cm) apart with 30in. (75cm) between rows. Old gardeners used to mulch under the plants with straw when the soil is damp (which is how the name of the fruit arose) in order to keep the berries off the soil, but these days you can buy mulching fabrics or black polythene to use, and re-use.
You can get earlier fruits if you cover the plants with cloches. It also protects the ripening berries from rain, which can damage them or induce rotting. And as I’ve already said, these plants need regular feeding: during the peak growing season this should be every week if growing in a pot, basket or growing bag, or every fortnight if growing in the garden soil. Use a general feed (such as one of the seaweed-based feeds) on plants in early spring and after flowering, and a high-potash fertiliser (such as tomato fertiliser) once the fruits have started to form.
There are many varieties to choose from, and you’ll find different ones for sale at the garden centre depending on when you visit.
The famous Wimbledon strawberry is ‘Elsanta’, producing large berries and lots of them. For me though, it isn’t the best for flavour. ‘Hapil’ is better, with excellent flavour, large fruits, and its ability to crop on light soils and in dry conditions.
If you want a tough, disease-resistant plant with a wonderful flavour for excellent jam then ‘Tenira’ is the one for you.
Introduced as long ago as 1890, the variety ‘Royal Sovereign’ produces moderate crops of large fruit in early summer and is packed full of flavour. Victorian kitchen gardeners ‘forced’ it each year for an early crop in March. They grew it in pots in glasshouses from small plants grown from runners (the long, thin stems that come from the bases of mature plants) taken the previous summer.
After the Second World War a number of mid-summer strawberry varieties came out of Cambridge University’s Horticultural Research Station. ‘Cambridge Favourite’ was one such, and it is still popular today because it is a heavy cropper, it tolerates a range of soils and it keeps its fruit quality even when berries are left on the plant for a long time.
At the beginning I mentioned that some people grow plants for their flowers, rather than the fruits. ‘Roman’, for example, has soft pink blooms, and the flowers of ‘Vivarosa’ are a deeper pink.
Of course, some people put manure on their strawberries. Me, I prefer cream, and lashings of it! Happy gardening!
This week in your garden
Don’t forget to deadhead spring bedding plants, such as polyanthus and pansies. If you don’t deadhead, the faded blooms will rapidly form seed capsules, and flowering will tail off. There is still a few good weeks of flowering to be had from these before it’ll be time to replace them with summer bedding.
Take cuttings of many house plants, including succulents, pot azaleas and coleus (solenostemon).
Mound soil over emerging shoots of potatoes to protect them from late frosts. This also encourages more potatoes to form and makes them easier to lift when it’s harvest time.
Peta Marshall is the plant centre manager at Priory Farm in Nutfield. Website: www.prioryfarm.co.uk
NEXT WEEK: Making the most of summer bedding
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