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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]
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More expensive by weight than gold, saffron is surprisingly simple to grow. MAT COWARD explains
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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.
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