The fruit of your labour

From picking them in his summer holidays as a teenager to planting them today, John Stoa focuses on the challenges of growing strawberries

Strawberry growing has always been a mixture of producing a very healthy and tasty fruit and rising to the challenge of growing them big, disease free, and over as long a season as possible.

Going way back to my teenage years, the normal growers’ season coincided with the school summer holidays because we were the pickers, together with local folk from towns and villages.

So the main picking was in early July. Growers had not yet discovered polythene tunnels.

My horticultural career took me south to a farm in West Sussex in the late ‘60s where I first saw fields protected with low tunnels growing Red Gauntlet ready for picking in early June.

However, botrytis was a problem with most varieties at that time so the crop got three sprays of fungicide plus a contact and residual weedkiller before the straw was run up the rows.

Crops were still picked by our farm team of ladies from the village, plus local Gypsies and many Londoners looking for some work in the sun with fresh air, good fruit to eat and good money if you worked hard. This was a working holiday for many of them.

Today strawberry growing has moved on dramatically. Almost all the crop is commercially grown under tall tunnels and new varieties are not prone to botrytis, and as they are containergrown there is no need for weed control around the plant.

In gardens, we now have new varieties appearing every year so we can try out something different and sort out those that work best for our locality. The challenge today is to pick the first strawberries well ahead of Wimbledon. With the right early variety – such as Mae – grown under a low polythene tunnel, I can get my first berries by the third week in May.

Sitting on the patio on a sunny day at lunchtime lunch with a plate of fresh strawberries, you know summer has arrived and it is only going to get better.

Once you start to pick more than you can eat, there is plenty for jam, compote and freezing. Where would we be without that freezer?

It doesn’t seem that long ago I was making 110 jars of jam (strawberry, raspberry and blackcurrant) during the berry season to last the next 12 months, provided they were stored somewhere cool. We went through

I still grow my strawberries in rows three feet apart, spacing the plants six to 12 inches apart depending on the availability of runners

two pounds of jam every week but we needed it, as our lifestyle was very active.

I still grow my strawberries in rows three feet apart, spacing the plants six to 12 inches apart depending on the availability of runners.

With new varieties, it may be wise to just take two seasons fruiting instead of the traditional three years, as some are reluctant to produce runners after a couple of years.

Today weed control is done by hand or hoeing, making sure the ground is clear before the straw is placed up the rows just before the first fruits start to show colour.

Botrytis, red core and mildew are no longer a problem with modern varieties but slugs, snails and birds just love them so slug pellets are essential, and netting over the crop should keep the birds at bay.

Other early varieties to try include Christine and Honeoye. Maincrop varieties include Elsanta Alice and Hapil and two good late-season strawberries are Florence and Symphony but to continue the season into September, look for the perpetual varieties, like Flamenco.

I tried Albion but bright red berries with a texture like a wee red turnip did not impress me, while Colossus was not at all big and the plants had plenty of leaves but very few berries. It is going to get dug out.

Pictures: John Stoa. Clockwise from main: strawberry Elsanta; the Elsanta strawberry plants in May; winter lettuce Vaila; John digging up some well-rooted strawberry runners; Anna making strawberry jam.