Strawberry success in a poor summer (From Blackpool Citizen)

Strawberry success in a poor summer

10:02am Saturday 25th August 2007

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THIS week I have been mainly eating strawberries.

Not to mention a few stray runner beans and cut-and-come-again lettuce.

The strawberries are fruiting at around three or four every day. The plants have really taken off over the past few weeks.

This is one specialist plastic barrel that seems to work - unlike its cousins, which I used to grow potatoes.

I planted three different varieties of strawberries to get fruit throughout the summer and even without constant sunshine they are slowly ripening.

We have discovered that if we leave them to ripen further after they've been picked, they lose most of their sourness and become quite sweet.

Some of the strawberries are huge and plump, while others are smaller and mis-shapen.

I suppose they must be the first fruit from one of the later flowering varieties.

I have a barrel full of carrots and leeks as well, but I think they are not yet fully mature so I will leave them for another couple of weeks.

Either way, though, the leeks and carrots look healthy despite the filthy weather this summer.

I may have planted them too close together as they have not grown to a large size yet, although there are a few weeks left to the end of the season so there is time for them to surprise me.

My cabbages are still tiny and the leaves look relatively OK, having been nibbled here and there by some greedy bug.

I've not given up on them either and I hope they become prime candidates for a breakthrough on the cabbage front.

We have given up on the bolting broccoli. My wife unceremoniously ripped the plants up and dumped them in the compost heap.

As regular readers know, we have had lots of little broccoli stems over the months until all the plants bolted because of the weird weather we have endured this summer.

Useable broccoli heads soon turned to a trickle and we decided they had to go.

We have left some purple sprouting broccoli in the vain hope of seeing whether they produce anything of substance - they have not really produced much at all - but I doubt it.

Their stay of execution will only be temporary. If nothing happens in the next couple of weeks, then they will be ripped from their comfy beds and end their days in the compost bin. That'll teach 'em!

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