Saturday 29 July 2017

In Defence of "Malwina"

The weather's been very mixed over the last week or so. At least the rain means we are no longer having to water the allotment apart from the tomatoes in the greenhouse of course.
Temperature & Rainfall Records 22-28 July 2017
I've seen "Malwina" strawberries getting a bit of a bad press on social media as they're prone to producing strange misshapen fruits. However, over the couple of years we've been growing this variety we haven't had any problems. We consider them to be our tastiest strawberry. 

Our "Malwinas" were planted in April 2015. They were planted through weed control fabric and to be honest have been given minimal attention since. Obviously weeding around the plants hasn't been a problem and through this spring's dry spell they didn't get watered. 
Strawberry "Malwina" planted on 23 April 2015
Strawberry "Malwina" are the 2 rows on the left in this photo taken on 02 June 2017
Today I discovered our first misshapen fruit. It was a small fruit but looked pretty odd with leaves growing out of the end of the strawberry.
But in defence of 'Malwina' I have to say that last year it produced 4.42kg (9.7lb) of superb fruits with no miss shapes, as far as I can remember, and this year another 4.24kg (9.3lb) of equally high quality fruit which tastes delicious.
Strawberry "Malwina"
If our plants are anything to go by then the misshapen fruits are produced at the end of their fruiting season as the fruits become smaller. We certainly won't be replacing our 'Malwina' strawberries because of the production of these occasional strange berries.

4 comments:

  1. I had a few handfuls of fruit on my plants which are in their first season and I didn't notice any misshapen fruit. In fact they were all pretty good, better than the other varieties I've tried.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Another good thing about our Malwinas is that they fruit later than all our other varieties and extend the season by a few weeks.

      Delete
  2. You have already won me over, not least because of the lateness. Looks like a good follow on from Marshmello!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is. Some think it goes too deeper red when ripe but I think it looks good.

      Delete

Thank you for visiting my blog and leaving a comment - it is great to know that there are people out there actually reading what I write! Come back soon.
(By the way any comments just to promote a commercial site, or any comments not directly linked to the theme of my blog, will be deleted as soon as I spot them) Please do not follow links from any comments that appear to be spam - if in doubt ignore.