Why grow strawberries

I use a rating system to help me decide what to grow and it considers lots of factors, but the main ones are how tasty it is, how healthy it is to eat, how expensive it is to buy, how big it's harvest is, when it's harvest period is and whether I can buy it organically and if not how much it's sprayed.

Strawberries rate quite high, they are extremely tasty and probably the heathiest sweet treat around and expensive to buy. They are also the earliest sweet taste available to harvest, although new season carrots are close and mangetout peas not long after. Importantly they are one of the most sprayed commercial crops. Their only downside and it's a big one, is that they occupy a lot of ground, for a relatively short harvest period. However their benefits far outweigh their downsides.

Types of strawberries

I like to think of many crops in the same way I think of potatoes. There are first-earlies, which I force for a very early crop in spring. Then second earlies, which I grow for harvest in early summer, followed by my main crop in mid-summer. There are also ever-bearing strawberries that you can think of like your 'Christmas' potatoes, which you can harvest up to the first frost.

I’ve recently been experimenting with super-early potatoes - ready in April - so I thought it only fitting that I do super-early strawberries too, also for a harvest in April!

https://airtable.com/shrAUlr60x4ptkpMG

Strawberry Vareties

https://airtable.com/appZUuG0p5vkxzPmp/shrpjbiOlFLQb35W1

Lets take a quick look at each of these:

Experimental timeline for early harvests

This is the rough timeline I’m experimenting with in 2026, after which I’m just growing naturally for a harvest in June onwards.

Here’s the feeding schedule, It avoids complexity and uses simple UK-available feeds:

• Tomorite (or any 4-3-8 type tomato feed)
• CalMag (liquid calcium–magnesium supplement)
• Calcium Nitrate (optional but ideal)