Kitchen Garden Forum

My Cambridge Favourite are the same Westi, a mass of flowers amongst the bed on the allotment at present.

I shall cover them in fleece soon and see what happens.
Some of the ones in our back garden have been producing the occasional fruit over the last couple of weeks.

Dont know what the weathers been like for you, but here in shef, we've had a really warm september, which seems to have extended a lot of my crops and confused some plants into recropping (I got a second run on my tomatoes)

Actually after I posted this I thought 'Plonker - of course you will try to ripen them!' Doesn't matter if they get spent as they have shot out more runners as well, so have the new generation ready anyway!

This year may have not suited some fruit but seems the strawberries are very happy thank you!

Westi

we've been picking a huge punnet full of strawberries for the last month or 2! I think I bought perpetual ones for my new stock (what a shame eh?) they are huge and there are loads of them, variety Ostara. (they are very firm and keep well, but my mum thinks they are too crisp for eating raw)

The Mara des bois and the Toscana are having their late season crop so I'm having a few on my breakfast muesli every morning. They are both in pots so I can move them into the sun to help them ripen. I also bring them into the greenhouse in spring for their early crop.

An interesting statement on "Farming today" on radio 4, was that you get better quality strawberries, if the bees that are pollinating them are visiting wild flowers as well.

dan3008 wrote:Dont know what the weathers been like for you, but here in shef, we've had a really warm september, which seems to have extended a lot of my crops and confused some plants into recropping (I got a second run on my tomatoes)

You should have changed your location to somewhere cooler place like Chicago or Australia if you felt so much sewer weather. What do you think?

linda0012 wrote:

dan3008 wrote:Dont know what the weathers been like for you, but here in shef, we've had a really warm september, which seems to have extended a lot of my crops and confused some plants into recropping (I got a second run on my tomatoes)

You should have changed your location to somewhere cooler place like Chicago or Australia if you felt so much sewer weather. What do you think?

I'd love to live in Aus or Chicago... But sadly I dont even have a passport

oldherbaceous wrote:An interesting statement on "Farming today" on radio 4, was that you get better quality strawberries, if the bees that are pollinating them are visiting wild flowers as well.

Did they mean wild strawberries, or wild flowers like poppies etc? I'm curious to know the reasoning behind that.

Morning Dilettante, i'm sure they were on about wild flowers, which i thought a little strange but, i was hoping someone else might have heard it too....

We have had a little strawberry plant in our garden that we bought from a garden centre but we only got one berry all summer until last week when we had a monster harvest of 3

Funny r1hvy!

Has it sent out any runners? Think you may need to increase your stock, but bet they tasted nice.

Westi

I've been very pleased with the Toscana red flowered ones I bought more as ornamental ones in pots with lobelia and white bacopa. I gave them lots of fertiliser and they still have lots of fruit ripening. One plant has probably had 30 fruits ripening a few at a time over the past month and it has about a dozen still ripening.

Westi wrote:Funny r1hvy!

Has it sent out any runners? Think you may need to increase your stock, but bet they tasted nice.

Westi

They were beautiful, in fairness they we in a quite little pot so I may plant them next year but I have tried to grow them in the garden before unsuccessfully.

What about one of those proper strawberry pots where they have holes in the side as well as the top? The strawberries hang down & hide the pot, easy to pick & can fit in quite a few plants.

Westi