I think Hubster is trying to poison me. This year he has grown a bumper crop of honeyberries, also known as ‘edible honeysuckle’. To be fair, one of our gardening books suggested these shrubs produce fruits “similar to blueberries in taste and looks, and can be eaten raw or used in jams and jellies”. Except they are nigh on inedible! They might be high in antioxidants and vitamin C but they remind me of the exceptionally sour Toxic Waste sweets that the children sometimes eat in school. Mouth puckeringly painful and dry as the Sahara Desert. I suppose naming them after something unctuously sweet was someone’s idea of a joke. Even the birds seem to avoid them; the best way to use them seems to be hidden in my jumbleberry jam where other fruits disguise their flavour.
‘Tis the season
We are still getting our footing back on solid ground following the wettest start of the growing season for over 40 years. But we are starting to reap the benefits of what we sow. Potatoes, courgettes, lettuce are available every day but the cost benefits of growing these pales into insignificance compared to the bounty that is soft fruit. Harvesting the first strawberries from the layer of straw on the hugel bed is a berry bonus that reminds me of a winning line on an old fashioned slot machine. The hungry slugs have left some for us and we’re now on to a winner. Our homegrown strawbs might not look quite like the incredibly big, red berries that come plastic packed in the supermarket but believe me, the comparison is chalk and cheese, they taste simply exquisite.
The blackcurrants are also ripe for picking and, following some intense pollination effort by the resident bees, the fruit is set on the raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. No £4 per punnet for us, we are self-sufficient in organic soft fruit. Gorging ourselves when it’s ready and freezing or jamming the excess. If you want to try to grow some of your own food, berries are definitely one of the most rewarding, kale can work well too but, let’s face it, humans evolved to enjoy the sweet sensation of a berry rather than the bitter leaves of a brassica.
Imported or homegrown
There is a lot of discussion if locally produced fruit or imported fruit has a lower climate impact. In his book on How Bad are Bananas, Mike Berners Lee suggests a 250g punnet of strawberries grown locally in season release 0.45kg CO2e, fruit flown in from South Africa grown out of season in a hothouse is 3.65kg CO2e and punnets driven from Spain are 1.8kg CO2e. Confusingly greenhouse grown Scottish strawberries have 1.7kg CO2e per punnet as they are often grown undercover with additional heating and lights. Our homegrown strawbs, with no packing, cloned from parent plants and nourished with our own comfrey tea and compost, might only be available for a couple of months a year at best, but they have a negligible carbon impact. Following growing your own, the best alternative is to buy UK produce when it’s in season and freeze it.
The climate crisis means food security is becoming a huge issue. Much of the UK’s salad & fruit comes from European countries that are struggling with drought and food waste contributes to warming. Raising kids who appreciate what it takes to grow food is vital. And it’s fun! In school we keep promoting healthy diets. There was a shocking article in the news this week based on a report by the Food Foundation UK which states that the height of homegrown UK five-year-olds is falling, child obesity up by a third and type 2 diabetes by a fifth amid poor diet and poverty.
Strawberries across the curriculum
Watching a child pick a ripe berry straight off a plant, free from pesticides and plastic, and pop it in their mouth is joyful. Their eyes open as their taste buds and nose detect the complexity of aromatic compounds that are absent from early picked fruits. The organic molecules responsible for the aroma and colour of ripe strawberries are furaneol and methoxyfuraneol, their concentrations increase as the fruit ripens. To enthuse and educate children on the benefits of growing food it shouldn’t just be when we are learning how to be gardeners.
Occasionally I have a mad plan (Hubster calls these MMPs, Melody’s Mad Plans). I was thrilled when my HT agreed to have a celebration of the humble strawberry for one day next week. They are exceptionally simple to grow in raised beds and pots, ripen early & are ready to eat before the summer holidays. In the school garden we started with ~10 plants.
The plan is that in Maths we will record the number of berries each plant produces. Then we can calculate the average, mean & mode. We will measure the mass of each berry and class 7C will calculate how many berries everyone can eat (once they’ve been allowed to forage for fruit there is likely to be slim-pickings for classes 7M, 7D and 7W) and they can produce charts & graphs of the data. In English we’re creating a story (if Dahl did one on a giant peach, why not a strawberry boat?) and finding references to strawberries in literature and writing a strawberry haiku:
- red ripe strawberries
- bursting with juicy flavour
- picked at their peak
In Science we’ll have plant life cycles, reproduction (sexual & asexual) including pollination, fertilisation and seed dispersal. We will take runners to create clone plants. Also the importance of insects for food security and photosynthesis. In DT they are designing hanging baskets for strawberry plants with the added stretch and challenge of including a self-watering system. En MFL les fraises sont délicieuses et peuvent être consommées sous forme de baies ou dans les desserts ou en confiture. Ils poussent au printemps et sont prêts à être consommés en juin et juillet. Pupils will draw a still-life strawberry in Art but if that’s not creative enough, they could also make a screen print, collage, finger painting or photographic image. The Geography department aims to consider the role & composition of soils and the benefits of locally produced rather than imported berries.
Mrs D has even made links in RE as, in the mediaeval period, strawberries were used as symbols in illuminated manuscripts with the three-part leaf symbolising the Holy Trinity. The red fruits, pointing downward, were representative of drops of Christ’s blood & the five petals symbols of his five wounds. When they do Food Tech they will discuss food preservation so we can still eat our berries in mid-winter and style a healthy red berry dessert or see if they like savoury strawberries with balsamic vinegar and basil. Finally the PE Department will host a mini Wimbledon-style tennis tournament and have strawbs as treats. At least I don’t ever hear the words ‘school is boring’! The national curriculum is dull so different interpretations on how to deliver it are to be embraced! Shame the school buildings aren’t so easy to fix!
Note to self: Remember to get the strawberry juice stain off my white tee-shirt. A dash of vinegar and salt-water should do the trick. If that fails I could use beetroot juice to dye it which is far less harmful than those packets of synthetic dyes. Oh, and remember to check if any pupils are allergic to strawberries!
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