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Taste of the wild
MAT COWARD recommends growing Alpine strawberries, which have a stronger flavour than their larger cousins, but which are happily unappealing to slugs and birds
(Left to right) Alpine strawberries; and a strawberry depicted by Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516) in a section of The Garden of Earthly Delights
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MY ALPINE strawberries are cropping well this month. Admittedly, if I was trying to gather a pound of them to make some jam I would have a long job, but these mini-fruits are prized for their intense flavour, not for their weight.
They’re a different species (Fragaria vesca) from the more familiar strawberries-and-cream strawb, and have been bred over the years from the wild or woodland strawberry.
Alpines have a number of advantages over their big red cousins, quite apart from the much stronger taste.
To start with, cost: Alpine strawberries are very easily grown from seed, so you don't need to buy expensive plants. For less than a couple of quid you’ll get a packet of at least 100 seeds, which is more than you’ll ever need.
Another great quality is that they will grow pretty much anywhere in your garden — even if you haven’t got a garden. They'll do really well in patio or balcony pots, or, come to that, in the cracks between paving stones.
For maximum yield of fruit site them in full sun, but in shadier spots they make a fine ground cover. They make compact plants, so you don’t need much space.
Most seed catalogues stock Alpine strawberry. My favourites are those which mix red and white fruited types, usually listed under some imaginative name such as Red & White Mixed.
Alpine strawberry is one of the easiest seeds to get started, needing no fussy treatment at all. Any time in spring, fill a small pot or tray with seed compost and water it. Then scatter a pinch of the seeds over the surface of the compost, and stand the pot somewhere light and reasonably warm, like a kitchen windowsill.
Don’t let the compost dry out completely. Alpine strawbs can also be sown in the autumn, and kept in a cold frame over winter.
The seeds will usually germinate within a couple of weeks. Once the seedlings have two sets of leaves transplant them into individual small pots and grow them on in cooler conditions, while still protecting them from frost. They’re ready for planting out once there is no more risk of frost.
If you’re growing them in the ground, give them a spacing of about 10 inches (25cm). In containers, put one plant per pot.
They’ll grow in almost any size of container, but the bigger it is the more volume of compost it will contain, and therefore the slower it’ll dry out.
That can be important: I lost one pot of Alpines this year when I forgot to water it for just two days during a brief heatwave.
Neither birds nor slugs and snails seem to find them attractive, and I’ve never seen any diseases on them. Alpine strawberries fruit from summer into autumn. They don’t spread by runners, like ordinary strawbs, but self-seed freely so you may end up with a garden full of them.
Just weed out any that are in the wrong place, and enjoy the rest.
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