StrawberryFragaria × ananassa

The strawberry wants sun for at least six hours a day, otherwise the fruit stays small and acid. Choose a well-placed bed, airy so the dew dries quickly, but sheltered from the cold winds that scorch the flowers in April. It likes light, humus-rich, slightly acid soils, and suffers in compact clays that stay drowned in winter: there, plant on ridges 15 to 20 cm high. Avoid putting it after potatoes, tomatoes or old strawberry beds, carriers of soil-borne diseases, and wait four years before returning to the same spot.

A month before planting, loosen to 25 cm with a broadfork, carefully remove the roots of couch grass and bindweed, impossible to extract later from a strawberry bed, and work in three to four kilos of mature compost or well-rotted manure per square metre. On chalky soil, where the leaves yellow, add a bucket of leaf mould or composted bark per square metre. Rake to get a level surface, or form ridges 60 cm wide separated by paths. Let the soil settle under one or two rains before planting.

Buy certified plants, in pots or modules, with a firm crown and good green leaves, rather than dry bare roots. Distinguish between the summer-fruiting varieties, which give a big June harvest, and the everbearing ones, which produce in waves until October: Elsanta, Darselect and Sonata for the first category, Mara des bois and Charlotte for the second, Gariguette for early-season gourmets. About twenty plants feed a family. You can also root in July the runners from your own most productive plants, one or two years old, never from diseased or ageing plants.

The best period here runs from 1 August to 15 September: the plants root in warm soil, form their fruit buds in autumn and give fully from the following June. A March-April planting works too, but produces little in the first year. Plant in the evening or in overcast weather, every 30 cm along the row and 40 to 50 cm between rows, in a hole twice the size of the root ball, the roots well spread downwards. The crown must sit exactly at the surface: buried, it rots; exposed, it dries out. Firm, water a litre per plant.

To renew the strawberry bed without buying, choose in June two or three vigorous, healthy plants, and leave each of them three or four runners. Guide the first rosette of each runner onto a pot of compost sunk to soil level, pin it down with a wire staple or a stone, and cut the runner beyond it, the following rosettes being less vigorous. Water the pot regularly. In three or four weeks, the rosette is rooted; then sever the link with the mother plant and plant the young plant on a new bed, in early August, like a bought plant.

The strawberry is happy in a pot, provided the volume is sufficient: a 20 cm pot and 5 litres per plant, a 60 cm window box for three, a container 40 cm deep for about ten. A mix of two thirds potting compost and one third garden compost, clay pebbles at the bottom, full sun, sheltered from wind. Everbearing varieties, Mara des bois or Charlotte, suit better, with their spread-out harvests. A hanging basket keeps slugs away and lets the fruit hang clean. Water almost every day in summer, feed every fortnight, and renew the plants every two years.

Planting in October or November, too late for rooting, and losing half the plants over winter. Burying the crown or, conversely, leaving the roots exposed to the air. Planting too close, which encourages grey mould in June. Letting all the runners run from the first year, which turns the bed into a sterile carpet within two seasons. Keeping a strawberry bed five or six years, when production collapses from the fourth year. Finally, forgetting the mulch before harvest and picking strawberries full of soil. A new bed every three years, on a different spot, sorts out almost everything.

The strawberry has shallow roots and quickly suffers from drought, but hates wet foliage, which attracts grey mould. Water at the base or with a porous hose, in the morning, six to eight litres per square metre twice a week without rain, every day in pots. The decisive period runs from flowering to the end of harvest, when lack of water gives small, hard fruit. Then return to a moderate rhythm in August, when next year's buds are forming. Reduce sharply in autumn and do not water in winter, except pots under cover.

At the end of April, before flowering, spread 5 cm of clean straw, miscanthus or flax shives between the plants: the fruit rests dry, stays clean, and slugs move about less on this coarse carpet. Woven black fabric or cardboard work too, but hold moisture under our rain. As for feeding, scratch a handful of compost in at the base of each plant in March and in August, after tidying, and water with comfrey liquid diluted to 10 % at flowering. No excess nitrogen, which gives leaves and runners at the expense of fruit. In pots, a liquid organic feed every fortnight.

From May, cut with secateurs all the runners where they emerge, except those set aside for propagation: each one costs the plant a share of its harvest. After picking, in July for the summer-fruiting varieties, cut the old foliage back to 5 cm above the crown, without injuring it, remove the soiled straw, weed and add compost; the plant makes new leaves within three weeks. A strawberry plant produces well for two or three years, then declines. Every year, plant a third of the bed afresh from runners, on a different spot, and pull up plants more than three years old.

Grey mould, botrytis, spoils the fruit in damp weather: space at 30 cm, mulch dry, water at the base in the morning, pick often and remove every affected fruit into a bucket, not onto the ground. Slugs are collected at dusk and trapped under boards; the coarse mulch and raised pots help. Birds, blackbirds above all, are kept off by a fine-mesh net stretched over hoops from the first red fruit, pinned well down to the ground. Powdery mildew whitens the leaves in a dry summer: milk diluted to 10 %. Against the vine weevil, whose larvae gnaw the roots, beneficial nematodes watered in during August are effective.

March, removal of dead leaves, compost, first weeding. April, fleece laid over the flowers on nights when frost below 0 °C is forecast, and removed by day for the bees; mulch at the end of April. May, comfrey liquid, cutting runners, net against birds. June-July, harvest, regular watering, removal of rotten fruit. Late July, cutting back the summer-fruiting plants, selecting runners for the next generation. August, planting the new bed, compost. September-October, last everbearing fruit, pulling up old plants. November, a layer of dead leaves between the rows, without covering the crowns.

Pick in the morning, when the fruit is red right to the tip, pinching the stalk between thumbnail and forefinger, every two days in high season. To spread the harvest, combine three types: an early one such as Gariguette from the end of May, a mid-season one such as Elsanta in June, and everbearers until October. A low tunnel or cloches placed in March over a row of summer-fruiting plants bring the harvest forward by two to three weeks; a fleece over the everbearers in October extends it by as much. Potted strawberries brought into a cold greenhouse at the end of February give fruit in May.