GROW YOUR OWN BERRY BOWL

Enjoy the fruits of your labour - literally - says Rob Smith, with home-grown berries. He also highlights some special varieties

- Rob Smith

One of the simpler pleasures in life has to be growing your own fruit. From sweet strawberries and blueberries to juicy blackberries and raspberries, they are all expensive to buy in the shops but easy to grow at home, plus they crop for years!

STRAWBERRY DELIGHT

When it comes to growing your own fruit, you should not only grow what you eat, but what is expensive to buy; so if you love strawberries, grow a selection to keep you in fruit right until the first frost. Over the last few years there have been some great developments in strawberry breeding, resulting in day-neutral varieties which will crop from late May to the first frosts (usually October), constantly providing a stream of sweet, juicy fruit to pick for your morning yoghurt.

Don’t get me wrong, they will never produce masses all in one go like the traditional June bearers such as ‘Cambridge Favourite’, but if you want fruit to pick every day for months, these are the ones for you to grow. I grow mine in small containers which are raised up on a wall, making them easy to harvest from, saving me from bending down to pick them. Another plus to the day-neutral strawberries is that some of them have coloured flowers, not just the traditional white, so you’ll find pink and red flowered strawberries which look as good as they taste.