Which Strawberries???

[Elmo]

Hi everyone,

Can anyone help me with which variety of strawberry to buy I have been scouring the internet but they all sound great. I am trying to find one early and one later to try and avoid them all coming at once but there seems to and endless list of varieties. I'm new to fruit growing and with my new allotment I want to establish a fruit section. I've got an area of 24m by 16m to fill with lovely fruit so any other suggestions would be great as well.

My plan is to put in;

2x 1m x 11m beds of strawberries
1 each of autumn and summer rasberries
1 gooseberries 11m x 2m
1 blackcurrant 11m x 2m
and one blackberries
and make a dividing fence with espalier apples and pears

So any ideas of any other varieties would be a great help to.

[nick the grief]

If you look at Dobies(or one of the others) catalogue they do a collection of strawbs 36 plantsI think they are Mae, Marshmellow & Flamenco they're not bad but others will have different choices.

You can't really have permenant beds for strawbs as you get virus troubles. what you need to do is have these as part of your rotation but you don't move them every year.

Strawbs are only good for 3 - 4 years so you root runners & establish a new bed & then ditch the old ones.

Do you really want a 33ft bed of goosgogs & currants? You'll get 5 or 6 goosberry bushes in 33ft easily & that will give you a lot of fruit! same for blackcurrants. I grow 1 bush of Ben Sarek which is a small bush but reckon to get 5lb-6lb of fruit off it so in your case 25-30 pounds of currants - That's a lot of jam !

As to goosberiry varieties I had 3 Invicta, Leveller & Pax when I took over the lottie. The Pax (red one) tasted like Cr*p - no flavour at all so that went. Leveller sucumbed to a winters ravages but tasted OK & the Invicat is as tough as old boots but not the best flavoured gooseberry I've tried.

Just my thoughts though so see if you can find some on someones plot & try theirs first.

[Lesley Jay]

I got 10lb of fruit off one gooseberry bush last year. Which was plenty but I have 7 gooseberry bushes in total and it is far too many.

[conifer bill]

Hi Elmo,
Have grown strawberries for 15 years, two varieties. ROSIE, early, and SANTA ANNA, mid season good old fashioned flavour. Purchased from Muir.Soil light, Conifer bill.

[pigletwillie]

An allotment neigbour grows Aromel strawbs which are an everbearer giving regular good yields up until the first frosts. I grow marshmallow which are great tasting and good yields but done and dusted in 4 weeks during June and July. With this in mind I am repolacing half with Aromel to give me regular supplies rather than 1 big glut. I have some 200 plants by the way so generally have a decent amount of fruit.

[Elmo]

Thanks for the advice everyone I never realised yu would get so much fruit from one bush!!!

Maybe I will have to rethink my plans a little