The strawberries have been ripening for a while now, for many weeks every stroll into the backyard wouldn’t be without picking a cheeky handful of these glossy red delights. But when the seasons change from Spring to Summer you get a lot of them come on all at once, and so, we achieve an excess.



We’ve only ever purchased about a dozen strawberry plants, and over the last three years as each plant has grown runners we’ve snipped them off and replanted them. I would not want to count how many there are now, maybe a hundred.

The biggest threat to strawberries in our garden is from slugs and snails. We don’t lay bait here so it’s mostly a matter of picking them as they ripen before those snotty buggers get to them. I’ve really got to try out one of those beer traps one day.

Today’s haul weighed in at 4kg. This is in addition to the 2.5kgs we picked only a few days prior. I reckon there’s at least that much again, to go. Strawberries don’t last long once they’re ripe, which explains why it’s so common to buy a punnet from the shops and find later that they’ve spoiled in what seems like only the time taken to drive home. So at this time of year, it’s strawberries on the breakfast cereal, for snacks, in ice-cream, and a good deal of it goes to jam, to enjoy all year round.