Strawberry Maestro - Fragaria ananassa

<strong>Strawberry (<em>Fragaria x ananassa</em>) is one of the earliest fruits of the garden</strong>, it heralds arrival of summer with its fresh, highly fragrant fruit, an extraordinary glossy red, eaten raw with sugar or whipped cream, in salads, in tarts, dried or as sorbet or cooked to make coulis and jams. <strong>Strawberry plant is considered a vegetable-garden crop because strawberry young plants are more often found in vegetable gardens than in orchards</strong>, even though it belongs to same family as apple, pear and peach trees. It is placed in category « small fruits ». <strong>Strawberry plants form attractive groundcovers with compound leaves of three dentate leaflets, often glossy of a lovely gree</strong>n <strong>but also hanging baskets both appetising and ornamental</strong> especially with varieties Mount Everest or Toscana which show pink flowers and excellent fruit. The herbaceous clump thickens slowly or spreads by forming stolons, very easy to transplant at end of summer to enlarge the plot. <strong>Strawberry is an easy plant to grow in garden, in ground but also in large pot, on terrace or balcony</strong>. Production can be spread over several months thanks to warmth of greenhouse but also to multiple perpetual and non-perpetual varieties which allow harvest from May until frosts. Plant still needs cold to properly initiate flowering. This is why most strawberry crops are grown under glass in rockwool blocks to limit diseases caused by soil fungi, and are renewed every year. In garden, <strong>renewal of young plants is generally carried out every 3–4 years.</strong> Did you know that scientific name of strawberry, <em>Fragaria</em>, comes from Latin « fragare » meaning « to perfume », whence derives word fragrance, a term describing an exaltation of sweet scents ? <strong>Species name <em>ananassa</em> comes from pineapple scent obtained by cross-breeding of two species</strong>, the Virginia strawberry (<em>Fragaria virginiana</em>), native to Canada, with a pronounced flavour and brought back by Jacques Cartier in 16th century, and the Chilean strawberry (<em>Fragaria chiloensis</em>) with large fruit and white flesh, which navigator Amédée François Frézier, a botany enthusiast, introduced to France in 1714 under reign of Louis XIV, about two centuries later ! Let’s not forget woodland strawberry (<em>Fragaria vesca</em>), common in our European understories except in Mediterranean, with a distinctive scent that still appeals to consumers and which is found, for example, in ‘Mara des bois’ strawberry. This type of strawberries forms clumps of 20–30 cm across, without stolons.