Jackie French gardening: How to grow strawberries in Canberra

This is the time to plant strawberries ie this afternoon, or tomorrow morning, or as soon as you can. Once upon a time ie, in my youth, which is more decades past than I like to count, strawberries were traditionally purchased in February, when the plants put out runners. Garden centres and small children on stalls outside strawberry farms sold piles of them wrapped in damp newspaper- strawberry runners survive a couple of weeks out of the soil, if kept cool and damp, ie wrapped in wet newspaper.

These days, however, it's more common to buy small pots of strawberries, and a potted strawberry will give you fruit almost straight away. If you rush out to buy the best available before anyone else reads this column, you may even be able to find plants with fruit already setting or ripening on them, and they'll keep doing it.

Some varieties crop mostly in spring and autumn. Others bear from late spring to late autumn. There are basically (and simplistically) three kinds you'll find available.

The most extraordinarily delicious strawberries are slightly improved cultivars of wild European alpine strawberries. The fruit is small but with the most intense strawberry flavour. They don't form runners, though the clumps get bigger each year and so can be divided. Even better, alpine berries accept dappled shade, making them excellent ground covers under trees. I have ours growing under a giant camellia in the veg garden. (I didn't realise it was going to be a giant when I planted it 20 years ago, nor that the wallabies wouldn't eat camelias and I could have left it outside the protected area).

I also grow the long, pointed, not very red at all French Mignonette strawberry. It doesn't look luscious, but can't be beaten for fragrance. This year I've also put in the German-bred Rutjana strawberry, a wild alpine berry selectively bred to be bigger and more colourful but just as delicious. A taste test is yet to come.

The second kind of strawberry are the "ever bearers". My favourite is "strawberry Ruby Red", which is supposed to have bright pink flowers. Our plant however puts out enormous gaudy blooms in the brightest red shade imaginable. The plants would be suitable to grow along paths or the edges of gardens simply as an ornamental, even if you ever ate the fruit. NB You will want to eat the fruit. It's fabulous.

They are also supposed to bear later in the season, from about January to late Autumn, but ours are the earliest berries to crop, and just keep cropping as long as I keep watering. Possibly, as they are so close to the wild variety, there is some variability in the cultivars, so yours may not do as spectacularly as ours.

The most popular strawberries are the "main crop" ones. There are many, many varieties. The ones sold locally are probably (only probably) the ones that will do best in our climate. They'll give a big early summer crop, then keep giving you berries till winter.

Treat strawberries well, and they will give you infinite treats. Their soil needs plenty of organic matter. If you are planting them in pots, use a good potting mix. In ground or in pots, feed, feed and feed, and water too. Remember that these fruits originated in cooler, damper forest conditions than Canberra. Give them loads of mulch. Pine needles are excellent, and so are wood chips and sugar cane mulch, but add fertiliser on top of those as they may draw nutrients from the soil as they decompose.

I feed our berries monthly, or rather, I intend to but don't always get around to it. The strawberries forgive me, and begin to bear profusely again as soon as I apologise with water and plant tucker.

Strawberries are prone to various viruses, and in city areas may need to be replaced every few years if they begin to bear fewer fruit. Ours are grown well away from other backyards, so have kept going for decades.

Other problems include slugs, snails, nematodes, berry-loving currawongs, magpies, wombats, wallabies and small children who may well get the ripe fruit before you do, though you may consider strawberry plucking by the kids as an excellent way to make sure they get lots of healthy berries, and a taste for homegrown tucker.

If you don't have a backyard, or even in you have an enormous backyard but have already planted it with beautiful or delicious vegetation, I highly recommend vertical strawberry planters. They range in price from $50 to about $200, usually with five tiers, big at the bottom, smaller at the top.

A five-tiered strawberry planter can be placed on a convenient step, though I'd tie it to something sturdy so possums or unwary guests don't knock it over. The corner of a sunny patio would be ideal. Two growing on either side of the front door would give you beauty and lusciousness and make it easy to munch a strawberry or six every time you go in or out.

One $55 five-tier strawberry planter will give you space for at least 50 strawberry plants. Plant now, you'll be plonking them on the pavlova by Christmas and enjoying them right through summer and autumn.

A five-tier strawberry planter would make an excellent holiday gift this year, especially if already laden with potting mix and fruit. The cheapest one I could find, the $55 one, actually looks quite good, and even better laden with leaves and fruit. The terracotta one is magnificent, and I would lust for it if we didn't have all the room we need for berries in the wombat and wallaby-proof patches of the garden.

Ironically, I have just spent the last week hauling out "strawberries", except these weren't, but a weed that looks like a strawberry and grows all too rapidly, especially in wet weather. They are the False Strawberry (Potentilla indica), native to monsoon Asia, and often found as ground covers, or left under trees in the belief that they are genuine strawberries, as they produce a quite nice looking red fruit. It's edible, but only if you like the taste of soggy cardboard. Haul them out - they spread all too easily, especially as birds enjoy the fruit. The best way to tell if they are "real" strawberries (Fragaria spp) is to look at the flower. They'll be pale to mid-yellow.

The berries you want to grow have white to pink to red flowers. They will also have irresistible fruit - far superior than you have ever bought in a punnet - sun-warmed, juicy, and fragrant. May you, too, be enjoying them in two or three weeks to come.

This week I am: