Strawberries are easy to grow (both indoor or out), needing just a little work & continue producing delicious juicy fruit for months! Each year they return stronger with bigger berries. Strawberries like to stay-put & establish roots, so start a good patch & let them do their thing.  They do need a little bit of attention to keep them coming back year after year. Here are my top 5 tips for growing strawberries:

Clean beds: Keep the strawberry beds weed-free so they have lots of room to grow.

Place straw around the berries: Find a local farmer near you who has fresh straw available and place it around the beds as you would with mulch. This keeps the fruit off the ground and protect it from rotting and moisture loving molds.

Pick Berries Daily: Do not let your berries stay on the vine once ripened, as this can increase the likelihood of problems.

Space Properly: Plants that are grown too close together do not do as well as those properly spaced. Most find that planting them between 12 to 18 inches apart is a good rule of thumb to follow.

Use a Fence or net: Lot of animals & birds love snacking on strawberries too.

Our garden strawberries are sweet, small & packed with seeds, each day we pick a bowl full - we just wish we had enough to make jam, but they never seem to last long enough. The handful a day is just enough to toss atop gelato...

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE WITH CORNMEAL BISCUITS
(Served with Chantilly Cream)

Ingredients:
(For the Biscuits)
3 cups, 340 g – AP Flour
¾ cup, 113 g – Yellow Cornmeal, fine ground
1 TBS, 15 g – Baking Powder
1 TBS, 15 g – Granulated Sugar
½ tsp, 3 g – Salt
2 TBS, 28 ml – Butter, chilled, ½” cubes
1 ½ cups, 352 ml – Heavy Cream

(For the Berries)
3 cups, 510 g – Strawberries, washed, hulled, sliced
¼ cup, 56 g – Granulated Sugar
1 tsp, 5 ml, or to taste – Lemon Juice
1 cup, 235 ml – Heavy Cream
¼ tsp, 2 ml – Vanilla Extract

Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 425˚F.
Combine the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, sugar and salt.  Cut in the butter until the mixture has the appearance of coarse meal.

Add the cream; stir until a moist dough forms.  Knead by hand until the dough is moist and manageable.  Place on a floured work table and knead gently for 1 minute.

Roll the dough into a rectangle approximately 6x9” and ¾” thick.  Cut the dough into uniform biscuits and place on a lined baking sheet.

Bake for approximately 20 minutes, or until the biscuits have risen and are lightly brown in color.  Let cool slightly.

Combine the strawberries and 3 TBS of the sugar.  Let stand for 15 minutes at room temperature.

Crush half of the strawberries, adding a little lemon juice; set aside.

Combine the cream, remaining sugar and vanilla extract.  Whip to soft peaks.
Split each biscuit in half horizontally and place the bottom piece of each biscuit on a CHILLED plate.

Spoon the berry mixture onto the biscuit bottoms in equal portions.  Top with a large dollop of whipped cream.  Cover with the top portion of the biscuit, spoon some berry liquid on top and serve.

Ashley Bartner is the Living in Italy Editor for Wandering
Educators. You can find her recipes and photos at:

http://www.latavolamarche.com
http://latavolamarche.blogspot.com