Strawberries

Rob's been on his travels again. This time to the Big Smoke- London! It doesn't happen very often and it's quite an occasion when he does- he even shaved his beard this time.

He was up there to help out with a rather quirky and exciting project with Cafe Direct. They wanted to film him doing what the Rocket Team happen to think he does rather well: plant stuff.

The Cafe Direct crew have rather cunningly managed to acquire bits and pieces belonging to celebrities, which they've then used as plant containers. And Rob was the man to help them out! Hence, he found himself attacking Stella McCartney's handbag with an electric drill to make drainage holes. Absolute sacrilege, if you ask me!

Designer handbag massacre aside, Rob's adventures have definitely inspired me to want to have a go at growing my own strawberries. And I'm in good company it would seem, as the story goes that Henry VIII loved them and even ate them as a cure for gout.

Strawberries do need a bit of tender loving care- pretty and delicious as they are, they're also ever-so-slightly temperamental.

I'm using traditional strawberry plants, which are far more straightforward to grow than runners. Runners arrive in a dormant state and need to be soaked in water for half an hour and then planted, before they'll spark back into life. They then grow horizontal shoots, which then grow individual roots themselves. Whilst runners can produce more fruit than just plants, if you've only got a small amount of space, they can be a bit of a hassle because they'll root themselves in amongst gaps between other plants and take over. As a novice grower, I've decided to steer clear from this method of growing strawberries, for now.

I'm going to plant a couple of rows of strawberry plants in one of raised beds in the garden- this will hopefully keep me in strawberries for most of the Summer. I'm using an early variety (Honeoye), a mid-season variety (Cambridge Favourite) and a late variety (Judibell) in order to spread out the harvest.

I may well also plant a few pots on a window sill - partly as an experiment to see which grow best and partly because they'll look so pretty. That's the beauty of strawberries, it seems to me though: they'll grow in a variety of locations....pots, raised beds, gro-bags; inside or outside.

Strawberries love lots of compost and also a layer of straw laid amongst the plants keeps them protected and happy. I'm fast becoming a fan of worm cast fertiliser, so I'll put a good handful of it in each hole, before popping in each plant.

Strawberries really dislike the cold and frost can kill them so it's really important to cover them in fleece until all danger of frost has passed.

Because of their beautiful, brightly-coloured fruit, strawberries have quite a few admirers in the animal kingdom: slugs, snails, birds and badgers are all partial to the fruit. Regular checking of the plants and removing any pesky slugs and snails will hopefully solve that problem. Covering the plants in netting should stop birds from attacking. Badgers could prove a little more tricky, however....I'll keep you posted.

Although a little nervous that my plants survive, I'm really excited about picking my first crop of fruit and eating whole piles of them, slathered in Cornish Clotted Cream!