ALPINE STRAWBERRY DELIGHT - SPRING TO WINTER

Autumn is upon us with chillier nights and mornings.  I've emptied and taken into the garden room the Smart solar-powered pitcher cascade which is not frost proof.  There are lots of things that need doing to wind up the garden for winter but I am taking it slowly, step at a time.  Today I picked more alpine strawberries.  They really are beautiful little berries.  When ripe they have such an intense, almost perfumed flavour, that I really love.  Getting to them before slugs is the challenge so I have placed my plant, which I grow in a largish pot, onto a plant trolley to keep them higher off the ground - dangling in mid air, the berries have more of a chance.  The birds seem to ignore them.  Good.  The berries are best picked when fully red and eaten straight away - lovely with breakfast cereal.   The alpine strawberry plant is fully hardy and here on the Pennine Mountains of West Yorkshire, I get flowers and fruit from late spring right up until winter.  I just picked a small handful today. 

You know, I think they would be lovely grown in hanging baskets.  I must try it, but the only place I have for hanging baskets only gets the morning sun.  However, this is what the Royal Horticultural Society says about growing alpine strawberries: "Alpine strawberries are usually grown in shade in ornamental gardens. They have small, sweetly-flavoured, aromatic fruits and tolerate cooler conditions than most other strawberries. They need no special care and can be left to fend for themselves after planting".   I think that comment refers to growing them in the ground.  In a hanging basket, they will probably require some feeding and definitely will require watering. 

How to grow alpine strawberries (Gardeners' World.com external link - sadly you have to put up with an advert first and Monty Don waxing lyrical).  In the video link Monty Don says that the alpine strawberry may be somewhat invasive, but I have not found it so.  Possibly that is because I grow mine in a container.  I have been growing them for years, however, I have seen only one little alpine strawberry plant growing quite a way further down the garden, in a more shady border, but it's welcome to live there.  The more the merrier, I say.  

Alpine strawberries - flowers and fruit, late Sept 2017

Alpine strawberries - lots of fruit to come, late Sept 2017