Which Strawberries to Grow in Your Garden

Strawberries are rightly among the most popular soft fruit with gardeners. They’re deliciously tasty and easy to cultivate in a small garden or even on a patio. But the choice of strawberry to grow isn’t always so easy, especially as new varieties of strawberry are constantly introduced. There are advantages and disadvantages to different strawberry varieties and choosing what strawberries to grow is very much a matter of the gardener’s personal preference. Probably the best option to start with is to try a mix of strawberry plants: mostly plants of a popular main crop like Elsanta, but with a few plants each of three or four other varieties.

Popular varieties which you’re likely to find available from a specialist grower, good internet supplier or garden centre include:

Early Strawberry Varieties

• Darlisette. A new early strawberry from France, with a particularly good flavour for an early and large, glossy orange red fruit. Fruits 4- 6 days days before Elsanta.
• Honeoye. A proven and popular early strawberry. The most widely grown early. Fruits 4- 6 days days before Elsanta.

Main Season Strawberries

• Alice. Regular shaped, orange red conical fruit. Sweet and juicy flavour. Fruit 3-5 days later than Elsanta.
• Cambridge Favourite. One of the oldest varieties with good keeping qualities, but surpassed for flavour by many newer varieties.
• Darselect. Large, well shaped brick red, fragrant fruit with a very good strong sweet taste. Fairly disease resistant.
• Elsanta. Probably the most popular main season variety with an excellent flavour which actually grows stronger in later pickings.
• Hapil. A proven and popular main crop strawberry. Heavy yielding with large well shaped fruit.
• Sonata. A new variety developed from Elsanta, with large, regular sized conical fruit. The flavour is sweeter than Elsanta in early picking, but grows less intense in later fruit.

Late Strawberry Varieties

• Florence. Widely cultivated for its regular shaped dark red fruit. Very good flavour . Fruits 10 days later than Elsanta. Disease resistant.
• Pegasus. Good yields of medium to large fruit. Good sweet flavour but rather soft flesh. Fruits 3-7 days later than Elsanta. Pest and disease resistant.
• Symphony. Good yields of top quality bright glossy fruit. Good sweet flavour but rather soft flesh. Fruits 10 days later than Elsanta. Good mildew resistance.

Extending the Strawberry Season

The strawberry season is all too short and many gardeners try to extend it by planting a range of early middle and late varieties.

• In practice the difference of a few days between varieties is of little consequence for home growers, although important for commercial production.
• Amateur gardeners do best to concentrate on whichever varieties they find produce the fruit they prefer for taste and appearance, and the best yields.
• A few of your chosen plants grown under plastic, in a greenhouse or cloche will usually produce earlier fruit and a longer spread than an combination of early and main season varieties grown in the open.
• Another way of extending the season is to plant a perpetual or ever bearer strawberry like Albion or Flamenco.
• These strawberries produce two separate crops in early and late summer, with sporadic fruit appearing in between. Not all gardeners find them successful, but they’re worth a try.

Having chosen your strawberries, growing them in the garden or even in a growbag is really very easy.