Organic strawberries are a wonderful alternative to traditional strawberries

; strawberries do not travel well they are a soft fruit and bruised easily yet taste of home-grown strawberries is sublime. One of the reasons that growing organic strawberries is so attractive is the fact that generally a large amount of pesticide is used in their production. Because the seeds are on the outside they are attractive to birds and farmers use pesticide to deter the birds from eating fruit.

Most people's iconic moment that defines summer is the moment that they bite into the first juicy sweet strawberry of the summer, and you can grow them in the yard or a sunny porch they do not necessarily need a strawberry patch.

Strawberries need only three things to grow and that is lots of sunlight, at least six hours a day, lots of water, a good rich soil; with good drainage; with those three conditions the strawberries will flourish. The strawberries are easy to grow with the soil high in organic matter, and they prefer slightly acid soil with a pH value of between 5.5 and 6.5. The root of the strawberry plant will rot without good drainage.

Strawberry Types

There are essentially three types of strawberry plants,

June-bearing

June bearing strawberry plants are early mid to late June produces the advantage of using the June bearing plants is the fact that they work well in dedicated Strawberry patches as they produced a long runners this then the room to spread and develop into new plants. Their disadvantage if it can be called that is the fact they produce or their strawberries out once.

Ever-bearing

Ever bearing strawberries produce fruit from late spring until the early fall the advantage of this plant is that they will always bear fruit but the plants are small and they do not develop long runners which means that they don't produce many strawberries at one time. Great for people who like home grown organic strawberries on their cereal every morning.

Day- neutral.

Day-Neutral produce a crop from spring until the fall but the majority of strawberries are produced at the back end of the season the disadvantage of these plants is they dislike really hot summers.

Strawberry growing Tips.

Once you have planted your strawberries strew pine needles around the plants when the needles decompose they raise the soil acidity.

Ever-bearing or day-neutral varieties thrive if you remove the first few signs of strawberries this allows the plant to establish itself.

Strawberries should not be grown near tomatoes eggplants raspberries potatoes or peppers because the plants may have verticillium wilt, which easily infects the crop.

Strawberry Patch Maintenance

Water

A well drained soil is necessary to produce fruit they need at least an inch of water a week. Strawberries have shallow roots and if the root dries out because the soil has dried out the fruit production will cease immediately.

Fertilizing

Strawberries benefit from constant nutrition they should be fed at least once a month with bone meal.

Keep your strawberry patch weed free

It is important to keep your strawberry patch weed free, because the weeds take water and that is needed to produce the strawberry fruit.

Pests that Attack Strawberries

Strawberries are a low maintenance crop with a few disease problems but the diseases that they do get are difficult to deal with. The greatest problem to strawberry growth is the birds they love to peck at ripening strawberries. One of the easiest ways to deal with this is netting, it is cheap and easy to use and effective.

Slugs and snails nestle in the strawberry foliage and many gardeners use copper edging around their strawberry plants because it creates an electric reaction when it comes in contact with their slime and not surprisingly this is an effective deterrent.

Verticillium wilt is of the disease which prevents the fruit from forming and kills the plant; to all intents and purposes there no effective cure once the plant has the fungal infection in his dead however modern plants have been bred to be resistant to verticillium wilt.

You've heard the expression a bad workman blames his tools; there is no excuse for any chef ever to blame their pans. Today there are perfect pans for every kitchen job. It is a question of finding out which pan works best. Nonstick stainless steel cookware conducts heat very well and they are perfect for making sauces and jams. If you have only a small strawberry crop you can make home-made sauce or strawberry coulis for your ice cream.

Homemade strawberry Jam.

Ingredients 1kg /2lb 3oz strawberries 1kg/2lb 3oz granulated sugar or caster sugar