Strawberry

While turn-of-the-century Tayside growers moved out of strawberries and into raspberries, strawberry growing continued to flourish in the smallholdings of the Clyde valley. Now the Clyde valley has largely turned to other crops, such as tomatoes, and strawberry growing has been revived on the arable farms of Tayside, Fife and the North-East. The 1990s success story was the variety Elsanta, which was first developed for Dutch glasshouse growing, and not for an outdoor Scottish summer. It is a large, orange-red berry, with a deep, pinkish-red flesh, and when fully ripe is neither too soft nor too firm. It’s a berry to be squashed when eating, when it releases its finely balanced flavours. Neither too sweet, nor too sharp, it’s the gradual slow-ripening of the fruit in the long hours of summer daylight that develops the sugar content gradually to give the berries their superior taste. ‘We sent our first consignment of Elsanta to France last week,’ says William Halley of Scotfruit, Dundee distributors of Tayside soft fruits, ‘and they have just multiplied the order by 10!’ Other large eating varieties are Pegasus, Symphony and Hapil (EM227), a large, soft, juicy berry with a short shelf life which is only grown on pick-your-own farms. Cambridge Favourite and Tamella are smaller-sized, jam-making berries.