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These sweet delicious fruit are a perennial favourite in desserts and sweets as well as an important commercial crop in the Lower Mainland. Plants are usually inexpensive and robust, bearing a full crop within a year of establishment and spreading so vigorously via runners that your friends will often receive gifts of your divided plants.
Strawberries are wonderfully easy to grow on the West Coast so plant a large bed to yield fruit for eating fresh and for canning. They are incomparable in flavour to expensive and bland strawberries grown in California!
Garden strawberry cultivars come in three flavours:
i) Junebearers: These plants produce fruit in June or july in a single large crop within 3-4 weeks. In California and warmer climates, they produce as early as April.
ii) Everbearers: Instead of giving lots of fruit in one go, these plants produce a modest crop in June, occasional berries in the summer, and a small crop in late August. Everbearers are good if you want strawberries during long summers but their total crop is smaller than that of Junebearers.
iii) Day-neutral: These specially-bred plants are unaffected by day length, a factor that controls berry production in other plants. They yield generously from June to frost in Northern areas or from January to August in mild climates. However, they do require more care as they are sensitive to heat, drought, and weed competition.
(Family: Rose, Rosaceae)
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