Category Archives: Strawberries

Whether you’re growing or eating strawberries, there’s lots of information here.

Help? What do I do with my strawberry patch?

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“My strawberry patch is overrun with weeds and I don’t know what to do… can you help please?”

This was a question asked by a customer recently who’s strawberry beds were full of weeds, just like our own.

strawberry flowers

Strawberries are flowering in the polytunnel

Like my customer, I’d left the strawberry patch to last as it really was the most weedy, daunting job in the vegetable patch this year. It had been neglected for several months and with no weed membrane or mulch surrounding the little plants that had been transplanted there from runners last year, it was now seriously out of control.

Strawberry Patch

Strawberry patch: before, during, after

Three days later (on and off) and the strawberry patch is looking fabulous and we’re hopeful that we’ll have a good crop of fruit this year, but it took some work to get it there. On my hands and knees pulling up dandelions, dock, creeping buttercups and thistles, I was almost ready to throw in the towel but kept going as I knew from previous years that this lovely Cambridge variety of strawberries can provide a bountiful harvest.

Back to the question, where to start? Like everything, at the beginning… pick a corner and begin to pull out everything dead or diseased looking and all the old runner stems. If you have too many little plantlets in the patch that have rooted themselves from last year, take them out and pot them into multipurpose compost or even some soil from your garden and give to a friend. Then weed by hand. All the pernicious weeds mentioned above need to come out roots and all or they’ll be back in no time. See some tips here from a previous post about weeding.

Strawberry Patch

Dead, diseased, weed roots and pests, remove them all!

I’m sure many of you have heard that the slugs are expected back in our gardens in large quantities again this year, but I’m guessing we’ll also be seeing a lot of crane fly too if the amount of larvae we fed to our pigs is anything to go by. Every single weed I pulled out had at least one or two leather jacket grubs around it and I’ve already lost one kale seedling to one of these little root eaters.

Once the beds were cleared in the Greenside Up garden, to keep the weeds down and cover our clay soil that can dry out immensely, we added a thick layer of straw around the plants, dampened it down with the hose to prevent it blowing away, then added hoops and netting over the entire patch to keep the birds out who love to feast on juicy strawberries. The new structure will also act as a cloche if frosts arrive at the same time as the strawberry flowers bloom… I’ll be able to cover the patch with horticultural fleece and quickly protect them.

Strawberry Berry Forming

Once the petals fall off you can see the fruit forming – bring on the sunshine!

Inside the polytunnel the few strawberry plants we added to give us an earlier crop are much more advanced with fruit starting to appear. We can expect the outside berries at the beginning of July all being well.

If you’d like to know more about strawberries, here’s a post I wrote a couple of years ago with more information, but for now we just have to wait patiently before we dig out the strawberry cheesecake and Eton Mess recipes and hope for some sunshine!

 

Mmmm Strawberry Cheesecake Recipe

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Strawberries

So who likes strawberries?

If you do this cheesecake/dessert is dead easy to make though you’ve been warned, there’ll be a bit extra washing up with different bowls and saucepans being used to make it.
This is actually a reposting from a couple of years ago as a) strawberries are in season and b) I wanted to mention for the benefit of anyone who doubts that growing your own can food save you money, this desert that serves eight people cost me just over €5.00. I’ll own up to using the cheapest ingredients so spending a bit extra would likely improve the flavour, but still – a nice treat for a weekend perhaps? If you’d like to find out more about growing strawberries, check out this post.

Ingredients

225g (8oz) digestive biscuits
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, melted
3 leaves gelatine
150ml (5 fl oz) single cream
300g (10½ oz) cream cheese
125g (4½ oz) caster sugar
Finely grated zest and juice of 2 limes (or lemons, or one of each)
300g (10½ oz) ripe strawberries, hulled & chopped (or roughly whizzed in food processor)
150 ml (5 fl oz) whipped cream
1 egg white

Method

  • Crush the biscuits finely (a food processor’s great for this) and stir in the melted butter. Mix together so the crumbs are soaked in butter then press into a loose-bottomed flan tin. (I made the mistake of putting it into a pretty, china flan dish once and it stuck solid, despite greasing it well with butter).
  • Put some cold water in a dish and place the gelatine leaves into it, submerging them completely. Leave them to soak and soften for 5 minutes or so.
  • Bring the single cream to the boil and remove from the heat. Squeeze the water out of the gelatine and add one by one to the warm cream. They dissolve straight away. Leave to cool while you’re preparing the topping.
  • Put the cream cheese into a bowl with the sugar, half the lime (or lemon) zest and all the juice. Beat together until smooth and creamy. Mix in the cream & gelatine mixture and then the chopped strawberries, then fold in the whipped cream. Whisk the egg white in a scrupulously clean bowl until it forms stiff peaks (you should be able to hold the bowl above your head without getting covered!). Fold the egg white into the cheesecake mixture. Poor the whole lot into the tart tin and smooth down. Chill until set and decorate with the remaining zest.
Tip: I’ve made this a few times and each time tell myself to prepare all the ingredients and have them ready in bowls, just like the TV chefs, but never do.

How to look after Strawberry Beds

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If you spend a small amount of time learning about a crop – the growing conditions it favours, how to look after it once you’ve harvested, as well as the pests and diseases to look out for, you will (hopefully!) be rewarded with a bumper crop. 

Strawberries are an amazingly hardy crop.  All the plants in both our beds survived the coldest winter we’ve had in years and we’ve had our best harvest from them yet.

This week alone from our Cambridge variety we’ve frozen approximately 30lbs, made 12 jars of jam, frozen a strawberry and rhubarb crumble and made two cheesecakes, as well as eaten them whenever we’ve fancied.

So what would it help to know…….

Preparation & Care


Strawberries are a woodland plant, which means that they tolerate shade, although they fruit better in sun. They like plenty of humus (in the wild they grow in pure leaf mould) and they don’t object to fairly acid conditions.

They prefer a light soil to clay, but will thrive in any well-drained ground provided they have plenty of humus. They develop a much better flavour in a cold climate, and new plants should be moved to totally fresh ground every three years as they are a hungry plant that tends to exhaust the soil.

When the soil is being prepared, it should be dug one spade deep and plenty of compost or well rotted organic manure incorporated. Strawberries like lots of potash too.

Weeds should be removed regularly using a hoe or by hand. Once the crop starts to spread, straw can be placed under the straggling stems to keep them clean.

Propagation

Virus-free strawberry plants can be purchased from reputable suppliers. Once planted most varieties make runners that will root themselves, which can be encouraged by removing the blossom from a few plants.  Small pots can be buried in the soil in the ground near the parent plants and the ends of the runners pegged on to the pots. When they have rooted properly, they can be severed from their parent plant, the pots dug up and the new plants transplanted. Parent plants can put out several runners, so choose two or three of the strongest and remove the weaker ones.

In this way a new strawberry bed could be established every autumn giving a freshly planted bed, a year old bed, a two year old bed and a three year old bed – the last of which will be ready for digging up. The new beds should be dug as far as possible from the old ones to hinder disease.
The bed shown on the left was made up entirely of runners from another bed.

Strawberries can be planted at any time of the year but it’s traditional to plant them late in the summer so they can be harvested the following year. They should be planted so that the crown is at ground level but the roots are spread out widely and downwards and watered well. They can be placed 38cm (15in) apart with 75cm (30in) between rows.

To help warm up the soil and to prevent weeds from taking hold, plastic or weed control membrane can be placed over the soil prepared for the strawberry beds, holes made in it at the recommended distances (see above) and the strawberries planted in them. Straw can then be placed on top of that to keep the fruit dry.

Pests & Diseases
  • Birds love to eat the ripe berries but the plants can be protected be covering with a net.

  • Powdery Mildew will make them a dull brown colour.

  • Aphids are a menace because they spread virus diseases.

  • Strawberry Beetle can be discouraged by keeping the beds weeded.

  • Rot can be a problem after rain. All ripe berries should be picked immediately after rain and rotten ones composted.

Harvesting & Storage

The fruit should be pulled off the plant with their stems intact, and the stems left on right up until eating otherwise vitamins and other nutrients are lost. They can be stored in the shade for a few hours, in the fridge for a day or two. The can be frozen but tend to go soft when thawed.

After Care

The straw should be removed once the crop has been harvested and the bed cleared of dead leaves, surplus runners and weeds.