Although I've moved the main soft fruit garden into a new place, the area left behind is a great place for growing with full sun.
So down there I've divided it up into 11 new beds plus a bed for the rhubarb and some herbs (sweet cicely). One thing I was keen to get into the new beds was some strawberries.
My kids would happily eat them every day of their life, but due to the cost of them it is quite rare that they get many and even then only in season (unless grandma brings some).
I think soft fruit is probably one of the most profitable things you can grow in the garden. the fruit is so expensive to buy but the plants themselves are easy to grow.
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| Soaking before planting |
I managed to source some plants from EBay quite cheap. For 60 plants it worked out at about 50p per plant. I split them so that the three beds planted up so far are divided into early, mid and late season.
Each bed has 19 plants in it. I prepared the bed with plenty of well rotted manure and then added woven weed matting with holes burned every 12 inches with staggered rows.
Varieties so far -
Early - Sweetheart
Mid - Sonata
Late - Cupid
I've just ordered another 40 plants to put in this week in another 2 beds -
Everbearer (20) - Flamenco
White (10) - Snow White
Main season (10) - Pegasus
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| Finding worms! |
Do you grow many strawberries?
Whats your favourite variety?
We don't eat many of our strawberries and raspberries, our grandsons always find the ripe one off the plants.
ReplyDeleteHA, I doubt I'll be the main eater of these, the kids will beat me to it!
DeleteIn the States Mother's Day is in May. My two sons went out shopping together one year and bought me some "strawberry plants". We laugh about it today because the shelf may have been labelled as strawberry plants but what they bought was basil.
ReplyDeleteI have some strawberry plants now. I don't know what variety they are. Two years ago they grew really well until something caused them to die, I've no idea what happened they were beautiful big plants one day and within a week they were black and dead. I think it got too hot too quickly, but I don't really know.
The plants that are there now are happy and laden with flowers and small fruits. I suppose we will have to put nets over them soon because the birds are on patrol all day and beat me to it if we don't put nets over them.
As for raspberries we're having a time getting some to grow. The bed is about 20 feet from where we grew raspberries 25 years ago but something keeps happening to them. I think part of it is that we have had a lot of rain over the last two years. After trying some canes bought from a catalogue a few times we bought some from Aldi. A few have survived, who knows maybe we will have some degree of success.
Helen
I like basil, but not in place of strawberries lol! I plant to propagate these hopefully so when it comes time to change beds the plants will be waiting! The raspberries here got completely out of hand so they've been removed. We'll miss them this autumn but I plan to put some more in, I was just a bit late this year.
DeleteWe laugh about our strawberry plants. About 8 years ago someone gifted me four plants. Suffice it to say, I have never had to purchase strawberry plants. They send out runners each year which I transplant into another bed. After about two years the first bed peters out but I now have another bed producing and so on. My current patch is about 40 plants all several generations from those first 4 gifted plants.
ReplyDeleteThey go mad don't they. One reason I grow through the plastic, otherwise it's hard to keep plants separate and growing right. In a couple of years time I'll set up a second patch ready for the change over, they might overlap a bit!
Deletethe birds always get them before i do!
ReplyDeleteThis will be netted otherwise we'd have the same problem. That said the white ones are supposed to be left alone but we'll see!
DeleteProperly ripe strawberries are one of the best things. Unfortunately mine always get taken over by weeds. I have better luck with alpine varieties for some reason. I'd love a glut of strawberries - is that even possible?
ReplyDeleteI hope so, it's what I'm planning for. I don't like the plastic as a concept but it's the only way I've managed to stay on top of them and lasts a good ten years if looked after.
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