Pour on the whipped cream!

摘要

With early, perpetual and alpine strawberries all growing on his allotment, TOBY BUCKLAND has enjoyed fresh fruit all season. Keen to repeat this success, he's busy propagating alpine varieties for bumper crops next year. Weeks of harvesting fresh potatoes, carrots, French beans, fennel, broccoli and curly kale at this time of year have made me fairly blase. Entertaining's so easy now, because all my home-grown vegetables need is a bit of butter and a pinch of salt to bring out their flavour. Sad to say, I come over like a devotee of The Good Life, casually saying to guests, 'Yes, I grew all this', while dolloping my pesto mash onto their heaving plates and chattering on about what a wonderful year it's been for French beans. Since the gooseberries finished, I've been struggling for home-made desserts and have been searching out good strawberry varieties for my soil. Strawberries fall into three groups: summer-fruiters which produce all their fruit in one go (early or late summer depending on thevariety), perpetuals that flush in summer and again in autumn, and alpine varieties.