Strawberries
A view down the plot from last week. I did not take a photo of the strawberries! Our strawberry plants were all transplanted over the last couple of years from around the plot as we were digging. I had already said in another post that last year I had repotted the runners from these as we had no idea how old the plants were and 3 years is the optimum life of the plant.
They overwintered in the cold greenhouse and were put out a couple of weeks ago into the fruit bed. Last week I added 6 plants bought in a tray in Aldi which look very healthy and a couple have flowered since then.
I bought:
2x Alice, high yielding mid summer fruiting
2x Christine, early variety (ones in flower)
2x Amelia, late summer fruiting.
I found a reference to Alice in the Garden News ( February 24th) as follows
Alice, a mid season strawberry producing large fruits from mid June onwards.Its a reliable cropper and the plants are strong growing and have good natural disease resistance.
In my reading I came across this advice to take the flowers off early and late cropping strawberries in their first year to ensure bumper crops next year. My only problem with this is we don't know the varieties of our other plants.If the Aldi ones are successful we can take the runners from them and at last have names for the ones that we like.
Feed plants weekly with a high potash feed after flowering to help fruit to swell and ripen.
In the autumn apply a feed rich in potassium as this helps the plant to harden up for the winter and helps setting of flower buds for the following year.
Comments
I love my kitchen towel. It washed up nicely and feels so good.
You'll have to report on which variety you prefer.
HI Bangchik I visited your blog and will visit again ,you are doing great also!
Flowergardengirl: No need to grow if you can get them on farms,lots to make jam etc and fairly inexpensive too i woulfd hope. Glad you like the teatowel.
Lindab, you always think you will remember small details like that but I know from experience too that I dont.The blog is great for looking back on things.