Strawberries are an integral part of my family history. I grew up at Birkdale, a bay side suburb in Brisbane that is now wall to wall housing estates but 25 years ago, was one of south east Queensland’s major food bowls. I remember it as a landscape of rich red soil, coastal streams running freely into the bay, and small farms growing everything from gladioli to passionfruit. Strawberries were a staple crop in the area because of its ideal growing conditions.
There’s also a more personal connection with the strawberry. My Mum’s late father, Douglas Fleming, worked a large market garden at Manly West and one of his major crops was strawberries. Sunday lunch at Grandma and Pa’s house was always a bit nondescript – Grandma had a penchant for burning the roast – but dessert was a thing of beauty and simplicity. A bowl full of fat “berries”, dusted with icing sugar, and served with vanilla ice cream. Superb! I’ll always associate Pa with strawberries.
I don’t know whether it’s in my blood or just a fluke, but this season has produced the best crop of berries I’ve grown to date. The plants are loaded with fruit. A new flush of flowers means that we’ll be enjoying berries with icing sugar for a couple of months yet. My one-year-old son Fergus wanders through the garden picking every half ripe strawberry he spots, calling eagerly to his brother and sister to come and share the harvest. Rarely do they knock him back, since kids seem to have an innate attraction to strawberries.
The wild or alpine strawberry, Fragaria vesca, is known in France as “fraises des bois” (fraze da bwa). This translates as strawberries of the woods and in appropriate conditions wild strawberries can be found growing all over Europe, from Iceland to the balmy shores of the Mediterranean. In my experience fraises des bois is an adaptable plant that will grow happily in quite hot conditions with plenty of sun – a division given to me by a neighbour is growing beautifully in a north facing bed as a groundcover beneath old roses. I haven’t tasted the fruit yet, but my wife (who nicks them before I have the chance) tells me that they have a silky texture and a sweet/sharp balance that’s more intense than the garden strawberry. Fraises des bois might be tricky to come by, but it can be grown from seed. Definitely worth a try.
The common garden strawberry is a hybrid, Fragaria x ananassa. Its cosmopolitan heritage includes the Chilean strawberry, F. chiloensis, and the F. virginiana, a north American species that once covered vast tracts of open land on the US east coast. The fact that the garden strawberry prefers a warm, sunny position is reflected in its parentage, though like the wild European strawberry, good soil conditions are important.
Site your strawberry patch in an open position with soil that is very freely draining, and slightly acidic. The red ferrosol soils found along the escarpment are perfect, but if this isn’t your situation, try adding lots of compost and manure to your strawberry beds, and grow on a raised mound or in a tub to provide drainage. Black plastic was traditionally used as a disease and weed suppressant, though for home growers the better option is a decent mulch of sugarcane, pine needles, or straw. This will keep the fruit off the ground, keeping roots moist and cool.
Perhaps the main issue with strawberries is that they are prone to disease. Verticillium wilt is a problem, and plants shouldn’t be grown where tomatoes or potatoes have been for at least five years. Fungal diseases are rarely fatal but can ruin a bumper crop. Try spraying with a milk spray or something like potassium bicarbonate (EcoRose). Always start your patch with certified virus free plants from a nursery, and to really stay on top of disease, replace your plants every four years. This is easily achieved by replanting runners, ideally into fresh ground, and discarding the old plants. Slugs love strawberries, so keep them in check with beer traps, or non-toxic snail pellets made from EDTA.
A final word of warning: strawberries are perhaps the most irresistible plant in the garden, and have a habit of disappearing before they ever reach the kitchen. The usual suspects are kids. Well and good I say, and another reason to grow your plants organically. Nothing is quite as gratifying as seeing a toddler wandering through the strawberry patch, picking berry after plump berry, popping them straight into the mouth still warm from the sun. If there’s any fruit left over, you might even like to try it yourself.
First published in The Chronicle 3rd October 2009. Photo by Lily Zhu via flickr.com.
