Inherited Strawberries

Last year M's father sadly passed away. He was a keen gardener and every trip to visit him included a tour through his immaculate garden and whatever veggies he had growing. As someone who went from never growing anything to growing on an allotment scale during the time I knew him these visits and his advice were as invaluable as they were inspiring. It was seeing how productive his greenhouse was for example that inspired us to get ours.

On one of the last visits we made before the end, when he was too ill to do the garden tour himself, his wife gave us a tray of strawberry plants that he'd potted up from last years runners and now needed a home. We took them back with us, potted them up in their own special blue tub and when he sadly passed a few weeks later we made a promise that we'd use them to populate a proper strawberry bed on the allotment in his memory.

So, when they started giving off runners at the end of last year we potted as many of them up as we could and left them over the winter to grow. At the weekend we cleared a smallish area on the plot and last night we took the baby plants up and planted them in their new home.

Later this year we'll take more runners from the originals and these new plants and next year add these to the strawberry bed until we've filled the space and have enough plants to enjoy a bumper harvest for years to come. I like to think he'd have approved.

Thanks Derek.