Topic: Strawberries "Toscana": anyone grown these?

[Deb P]

Went to my mum's local garden centre today, only to find they were having a massive sell off of plants! Could not resist some packs of strawberries, 6 plants were £1 a pack so bought 18 plants for £3! (Original prices were £7.99 a pack!)

The plants are healthy and have lovely deep pink flowers, the variety is "Toscana" which seems to be an 'everbearing' type, but most sites who mention it seem to recommend it as a container/ hanging basket type, but I had planned to plant them on my lottie.

Has anyone grown this variety like this, or have any comments about the flavour of the fruits?

[grannyjanny]

I was going to suggest that you looked for some bargain ones Deb. I have Toscana but not had any fruit yet, all are flowering & mine are in the ground too. I picked up another 6 for £2 at B&Q, just regular supermarket ones but TBH I find if they are picked ripe they all taste lovely, might just be me though. We've had mouse problems this year, only had 3lbs from an 18'x5' bed. The mice took lots off the plants at various levels of ripeness & nibbled lots of them.

[Deb P]

Think I'll just plant them out then as soon as the patch is ready, I was pretty pleased with my bargain!

[antipodes]

On some of the strawberry farms, they actually plant the plants on mounds and let the fruit cascade over the sides. perhaps that would be a good compromise?

[Deb P]

That's interesting: my soil is a bit heavy and prone to drying out like concrete in this hot weather, I'd have to improve the soil a bit more before trying that I think but it's a good idea. I have previously tried shredding my Christmas tree and using that to mulch my strawberry bed as apparently they like an acidic mulch and that worked well and would help to hold in moisture.

[Deb P]

Just an update: I ended up splitting the bargain plants and potted them all on, so now have 24 plants that have grown at a fantastic rate!ost have fresh dark rose coloured flowers, very attractive. To make them all the sweeter purchase, I went to a Wyvales store yesterday to see if they had started their seed sale yet, and they also had some Toscana plants the same size as my plants...... For £4.99 EACH!  At those prices my 24 plants are worth almost £120 ....!!!!

[Deb P]

The potted on strawberries went into the ground on the plot yesterday, I planted 18 plants so have half a dozen left to try in containers. Now they are being nicely soaked in the rain!

Since I completely cleared the 'old' strawberry bed, the surviving plants are now producing new foliage and runners, so I'm going to grow them on as well....getting there!

[Deb P]

Update: the plants are all flowering and cropping, the dark pink flowers are stunning and I keep getting asked what variety they are. The fruits are not over large, and are inclined to flop on the ground as I feared, so I will have to sort that somehow. Flavour is rather nice too, sweet but with a slight sharpness too, but they do need to be fully ripe (my impatience to try them!).A few are producing runners that have attractive red stems, so I will definitely propagate them and try them in my old wheelbarrow trailing over the edge as well.

[Paul.and.Lynda]

We have 10 inches of top soil then heavy clay. We built our strawberry bed with lots of well rotted horse manure and planted the strawberries straight in that and the results have been fantastic. Every couple of days we get about one to one and a half lbs of strawberries from the plants. We are making another strawberry bed through the winter months ready for next year after these results.
Paul 

[Deb P]

What varieties are you growing?

I haven't tried 'ever bearing' types before but at this rate I'm going to change my mind...

[Paul.and.Lynda]

They are just everbearers that we paid £10 for 40 bare root plants. We lost a few due to the waterlogged ground that they were originally in, we raised the bed and put in lots of manure to try to stop the waterlogging. So far it seems to have worked - touch wood
Paul