Here in Ireland, restricted movement means travelling no further than 5km though the UK has looser restrictions. Fortunately, despite my isolated location, the nearest business is a strawberry farm, 1km away, and Wexford is known throughout the country for its strawberries. The recent hot weather has been perfect for early fruit in tunnels to ripen so they are soft and sweet – how they should be. My morning walk was rewarded with a kilo tub of huge, tasty berries.
I have planted some strawberries in my own garden but, everything being new, I am not expecting much of a crop this year. I have planted three varieties including the old ‘Royal Sovereign’ the variety served to the Queen on her Coronation. In fact it is so old that Queen Victoria could have eaten it – it was introduced in 1892. It is extraordinary for a strawberry variety to have survived so long but the reason is the taste and texture. It is not a heavy cropper but is worth it to have ‘proper’ strawberries. Although I would say that it is a good second best, I am not growing ‘Elsanta’, another well established variety that we would have sold at Knights in ‘my days’ there. I am not growing it simply because it is so common in shops. When buying fruit in shops I always look out for ‘Elsanta’ because it is always good flavoured.
Quite what we will do when plastic containers are banned I can’t imagine. When at school I worked at the greengrocers Meyers in Oxted and trays of strawberries came in, were tipped in the window display and scooped out into paper bags and weighed. I doubt anyone ever had an undamaged fruit and the waste was horrific! And as for the wasps in the window!
Strawberries are great to grow at home but, as with all soft fruits, you need to protect them from birds – blackbirds. In my own, new garden, that was once a field, as I have been planting and mulching, a whole new range of birds have made their home here, including blackbirds. At the moment I am delighted by mum and her two fledglings hopping round the polytunnel but I won’t be when the strawberries all get gobbled up. The next job is to build a fruit cage. I wont get any fruit on the raspberries, gooseberries and currants till next year so I have time.
Talking of jobs, although the Derby is cancelled this year, Derby day always means time to trim box. Usually the growth is quite extensive by then, though with the dry spring it is not quite as fluffy as usual. Derby Day is a good time because there will not be any more frosts to damage the new growth and the nicely trimmed hedge will set off all the summer flowers.
Box can be used for low hedges and is a popular choice for topiary, in the soil or in pots. If planting in pots use John Innes No 3 compost and not multipurpose. If your potted box is orange and not green it is a sign that it is starving and possibly dry too. Give it a sprinkle of chicken pellets, which is high in leaf-greening nitrogen, and a good soak.
The world’s tallest box hedge is at Birr Castle, Co Offaly and 300 years old and is 13m (40ft) high, though a bit thin in places (at least when I went).
Jobs for the week
Sow winter veg
If you are able to keep soil moist, now is the last chance to sow crops for autumn and winter. Winter cabbage, leeks and broccoli can be sown in rows in the garden or in seed trays to replant in a month or so. Watch out for pigeons as your seedlings come up or when you plant out – they will strip the leaves in a single night.
Trim tomatoes
Keep on top of your tomato training, removing sideshoots regularly to keep them to a single shoot. You need to feed plants in pots every week now and make sure they never dry out.
Stake peonies
Peonies are the most beautiful of all summer flowers but they must usually be staked or when the flowers open (and it inevitably rains) the blooms can be beaten down. Staking and supporting before it is needed is the sign of a great gardener and I never get it all done so I fail in that regard. If you let plants flop over and stake them the next day the stems always have a kink to remind you of your failing!
Watch for lupin aphid
Watch out for the huge lupin aphids which usually congregate in huge numbers on the flower spikes. They can be present in such numbers and suck so much sap that they kill the buds. Most insecticides kill aphids, including organic ones or you can get great satisfaction from squashing them, en masse, as you pass by.