Fruits scented like wild strawberries, others huge and sweet enough to please any child: home-grown strawberries are nothing like the bland ones on supermarket shelves. Give them a soil rich in humus, slightly acidic and sandy, then pair early cultivars with late ones, and you will be picking from late spring right through to mid-autumn.
You’ll learn about:
…to make sure success is just a season away!
Whether you purchase your strawberry plants at the market, in horticulture stores or over the internet, you’ll have to choose from either determinate or indeterminate strawberry plants. What does this mean? Just like rose trees, the flowers of a strawberry plant will either come only once a year (determinate varieties) or twice a year (indeterminate).
Certain strawberry plant cultivars are early and others late or tardy. If you pair and match them well, you’ll be harvesting from May to October. Aficionados of organic fruits will favor disease-resistant varieties that don’t require chemical treatments, so that children can snap them up right from the bush!
Before you buy, it helps to know which of the four types of strawberry plant you are looking at, because each one fills a different part of the picking season. Matching them is what turns a single glut into months of fruit.
| Type | Flowering and fruiting | What you pick | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Determinate | Flowers once a year | One main crop | A single, concentrated picking |
| Indeterminate | Flowers twice a year | Two crops in the same year | Fresh fruit over a longer stretch |
| Early cultivars | Flower and fruit first | Fruit from late spring | Opening the strawberry season |
| Late or tardy cultivars | Flower and fruit later | Fruit on to mid-autumn | Stretching the harvest at the far end |
Grow an early type alongside a late one and the picking runs from late spring right through to mid-autumn.
In your vegetable patch, best select soil that is rich in humus, and slightly acidic and sandy to set your strawberry plants up.
Full sun exposure is preferable. Black mulch film pulled along the soil will keep weeds from growing and will speed up fruit formation. If you don’t like plastic, you can mulch with straw or cocoa hulls around the plants instead.
Space your strawberry plant by 8 inches (20 cm). Water it regularly after that, without getting the leaves wet. Strawberry doesn’t like excess water. Before harvesting, stretch a net or hang old CDs over the planting bed to keep birds at bay.
For their fragrance of wild strawberry, try out the ‘Mara des Bois’, the ‘Reine des Vallees’ and the ‘Ciflorette’. To please children that have a sweet tooth, select the ‘Gariguette’ and the ‘Gento’ which bear huge fruits.
If you like to prepare strawberry jam, plant ‘Ostara’, ‘Rabunda’ and… ‘Mamie’ which means granny in French. And trick the birds with the white strawberry ‘Golden Alpine’.
Up to you now to prepare sumptuous strawberry fruit salad flavored with crushed mint leaves, and delicious jams to savor all year long!
Pierrick Le Jardinier
