Strawberry Dreams

Nothing beats a homegrown bowl of strawberries with some double cream. Yummy! I think we've probably still got enough left for another bowl each. They sure have done us proud this year – maybe triple the crop we had last year.

Red Strawberries!

So Wimledon started this week and look! The strawberries are turning red! How wonderfully English :-)

We're away at Glastonbury for the week so unfortunately we won't be sampling the delights just yet.

Back on Monday so after we've scrubbed ourselves clean we might enjoy a nice bowl with a glass of Pimms. That's if our friend whose kindly watering the garden for us while we're away doesn't decide to eat them first!!

It's a Harvest Festival!

Wow. A beautiful sunny day, a nice glass of Rosé and a wonderful harvest. We got 2.5kg of earlies and our first bowl of homegrown strawberries.

The earlies are the Epicure variety and we can heartily recommend them, they have a delicate flavour, very white flesh and are nice and fluffy. We gently boiled them for about 8 minutes and then lightly fried them with some sage from the herb garden, served with a yogurt and chive dip. The sweet sweet strawberries, with a spoonful of creme fraiche and a dollop of honey. Deeeelish.

Bedding down with the Strawberries

We gave the strawberries alot of TLC this weekend. There's six plants altogether and each plant has alot of fruit already, most of them small and very much of the green variety but this cheeky chappy is blushing to say the least!

We read in our Alan T book that you need to give the plants a pillow of straw, so the actual berries don't come into contact with the ground, otherwise they'll go mouldy. So as you can see from the piccie above we duly followed instructions. We've also netted them off as the birds will go crazy over the straw and that'll draw their attention to the berries which they'll devour in an afternoon if they get their own way. Also to note, Alan mentions that you should water around the plants and try not to get the fruit wet, as again this could make them go mouldy, so be extra careful with your watering.

So, fingers crossed it could be perfect timing. A bowl of freshly picked, homegrown strawberries as we sit down to watch Andy Murray beat Roger Federer in the Wimbeldon final. Well, I'll put a bet on half of that coming true...