Plant of the week - Strawberry 'Cambridge Favourite'

Everyone knows you can't beat British strawberries when they are in season. And even better when you can pick them yourself and eat them within seconds of them being picked! Much tastier than the supermarket varieties which have been chilled, travelled and sat around in plastic punnets, the taste of warm fresh strawberries reminds me of going on 'pick your own' expeditions as a child, where the object was to eat as many strawberries as you could without being sick instead of popping them in the basket to pay for them.

I bought three strawberry plants from my local garden centre 'Garden Pride' four years ago. From cultivating the runners and allowing them to spread, I now have a 3 metre long bed full of strawberry plants - the result of my daughter planting twenty plants in the ground two years ago.

First bowl of strawberries 2013 - 'Cambridge Favourite'

I don't give them much care, although they do get attacked by slugs - the wet summer of 2012 meant that most of the strawberries were eaten before they were ready to eat. This year the slugs haven't had much of a chance as July has been exceptionally hot and dry, instead there are a plethora of woodlice eating themselves little hidey-holes in the delicious red berries - disappointingly, some of the reddest berries turn out to be hollow on closer inspection! They taste delicious, even when they aren't quite the traditional pillar-box red - but have to be eaten quickly as they don't last long chilled.

I read that strawberries aren't technically berries. I remember learning in school about the anatomy of a buttercup flower, which is related to the strawberry I think - where the seeds are on the outside of the enlarged flower receptacle. Strange but true!