I really am! I love them so much, I've ended up with 6 large beds full that edge my patio. Up until this spring, they were wonderfully healthy and provided me with masses of beautiful fresh tasting fruit.
I noticed this year that a few of the beds didn't look that great (the above one is doing well though). I thought the terrible winter may have had something to do with it, and ordered some new varieties to fill in the gaps. I have Elegance, that produces enormous tasty strawberries in June and July, Florence, a prolific cropper from the end of June to the end of July and Finesse, an everbearer with exceptional flavour, cropping from July to October.
After forking over one bed to add the new varieties, I soon discovered that the culprit may not have been the weather at all, but the rather devastating larvae of the Vine Weevil!
I noticed this year that a few of the beds didn't look that great (the above one is doing well though). I thought the terrible winter may have had something to do with it, and ordered some new varieties to fill in the gaps. I have Elegance, that produces enormous tasty strawberries in June and July, Florence, a prolific cropper from the end of June to the end of July and Finesse, an everbearer with exceptional flavour, cropping from July to October.
After forking over one bed to add the new varieties, I soon discovered that the culprit may not have been the weather at all, but the rather devastating larvae of the Vine Weevil!
These beasties nibble away on the thin roots of plants and the outer tissue of thicker roots, eventually killing the plant. I picked out as many of them as I could and put them on the table for the birds, but seriously, there were so many I got fed up after a while. Fingers crossed they don't do any damage to my my new plants!
Not content with the strawberries in my beds, I also have some in the ground, and have just popped these wild strawberries, Fragaria vesca Alexandra, into my basket stand. I'm hoping the little alpine strawberries I'm growing from seed will be able to join these in a month or two.
If my other beds don't pick up soon, there may be even more varieties joining them in the next month or so.
