How To Grow Strawberries

Freezing tomatillos is a great way to preserve them so you have some on hand whenever you need them.

Russian sage is easy to care for and fun to grow in any perennial flower bed or landscaping.

Although August is the height of the summer, and it’s worthwhile taking time to stop and smell the roses, the vegetable gardener also has to be aware that autumn is just around the corner. That doesn’t have to be a depressing thought! It just means you need to harvest any crops that won’t survive the first frosts, and that you may want to preserve some so that you can have a homegrown taste of summer during the winter months. You should have some new crops on the way to look forward to, and be thinking about potting up herbs to bring under cover for the winter.

Wimbledon fortnight coincides with the height of the strawberry season here in the UK and the humble strawberry becomes world-famous as tennis spectators tuck into strawberries and cream in front of the cameras. This year it even looks like they’ll be able to leave their raincoats at home!

I’ve got a lot of new strawberry plants in my garden this year. They’re not all planted out in their final homes, so it won’t be a bumper crop, but there should be some ripe fruits for me to harvest soon enough. I’ve got several different sorts, from the tiny red and white alpine and wild strawberries to the standard garden red ones, and some intriguing framberries that are strawberries that taste like raspberries! So it will be fun to see how those turn out.

If October starts warm it can provide a nice breathing space, to catch up late harvesting, saving seeds and generally getting the garden ready for the winter. It’s also the time to cover any bare soil, with mulches if necessary, to protect your soil structure from bad weather, and to ensure any tall plants (mainly brassicas) are staked against ‘wind rock’, which can lift their roots out of the soil. You may also need to net brassicas to stop them being munched by marauding pigeons.

Ah, April, a month that gives us leaves on the trees, blossom in the hedgerow, and a headache with its changeable weather. We gardeners would love April to be a season of sunshine and soft showers. But, instead, we need to plan for sleet and hail, or even snow. As the effects of climate change are felt more widely, we may even need to forego thinking of April as a rainy month at all, and just an extension of dry winters. It’s also at least a month before we can be relatively sure that there will be no more frosts.

May is a lovely month in the garden, although it’s a busy time for the gardener! It’s a good sowing month, plants will be growing strongly in the higher temperatures and light levels, and there will be some harvests on offer. You’ll also be able to watch the birds, bees, butterflies and other wildlife enjoying your organic plot!

Header image: A researcher in a spacesuit on “Mars” outside the Mars Society Desert Research Station in Utah. David Howells/Corbis Historical via Getty Images

Today (May 20th) is Pick Strawberries Day in America. It’s a bit early in the UK – the strawberry season is only just beginning, ramping up to be ready for Wimbledon in June.

Jill Edmondson, University of Sheffield and Jonathan Leake, University of Sheffield

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