This year we planted some wild strawberry seeds, (fraises du bois), which germinated really well giving us about 40 plants. We planted these out in May. At first they produced very small strawberries - maybe due to the really dry weather or maybe due to the plants being quite small. However, now the fruit produced are a reasonable size, although not as big as the more commonly grown strawberries.
The plants fruit so freely that you can even allow the slugs to have a few. As the strawberries do not trail on the ground, this is however less of a problem.
From August onwards we have been picking strawberries every week - sometimes every day. The ones in the photo above were picked the last weekend in October. The berries have a more delicate flavour than other strawberries and are great for sprinkling on top of fruit salads.
Apparently you should treat the plants as annuals, however, we are going to leave the plants in but plant some more seeds for next year just in case.
As you can see from the photo above taken at the end of October there are still many more berries to come, presumably until the first frosts put an end to the bounty! Maybe we will just manage a bowl on bonfire night.
Alpine Strawberry seeds are available from Thompson and Morgan click here