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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 [(Left to right) Arvind/CC - Museo Nacional del Prado/CC]

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.

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