There is nothing quite like a homegrown strawberry eaten with the warm sun on its skin, preferably picked from your own garden. Much of our strawberry breeding is carried out at Kent’s East Malling Research (EMR) centre, once government funded but now privately owned. East Malling gave us the classic raspberry ‘Autumn Bliss’ (in 1983) and countless fruit varieties with a ‘Malling’ prefix. It has also developed root stocks for cherries, pears and the M series for apples, used throughout the world. In recent years this research station has concentrated on soft fruit. Their strawberries, often given girl’s names like ‘Rosie’ (1999), ‘Lucy’ (2009 ) and ‘Fenella’ (2000), are well known. Adam Whitehouse, one of the plant breeding team says “our aim is to extend the season beyond June in the main British production areas Kent, Herefordshire, Staffordshire, Essex and Scotland”.

East Malling, founded in 1913, celebrates its centenary this year. Its new strawberry, Malling Centenary, was launched at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. It was selected eight years ago “from complex parentage” and fruits about two weeks before the industry standard ‘Elsanta’. It made the Plant of the Year competition held at Chelsea every year and I tasted the sweet fruit myself while judging and was very impressed. East Malling has already produced Vibrant (2011), an early productive strawberry that’s easy to pick, and Elegance (2009), a later variety with glossy well-flavoured berries. Both appear in supermarkets.

The delicious Malling Centenary will be available for home gardeners as ‘misted tip’ plants in mid-August from DT Brown. This new technique, when plants are raised in a controlled propagation unit with regular mistings, should ensure a good yield next year. Autumn-planted, bare-root runners do not fruit in their first summer after planting. DT Brown has established its own plots at the Kent breeding station to trial various growing techniques and assess potential varieties for British gardeners. Some bred at EMR will be introduced to the home gardener by DT Brown. (12 misted-tip plug plants of Strawberry Malling Centenary cost £14.95, with two packs (24 plants) priced at only £12.45 per pack – a saving of £5 (0845 3710532/ dtbrownseeds.co.uk).

The strawberry is a descendant of an accidental 18th-century hybrid between a Chilean strawberry, Fragaria chiloense, and a North American variety F. virginiana. It occurred when Antoine Nicolas Duchesne, botanist and gardener at the Palace of Versailles, grew both side by side. They hybridised to produce large red fruit. The same hybrids were planted in England by Thomas Andrew Knight (1759–1838), a horticulturalist and botanist who lived at Downton Castle in Herefordshire, and Michael Keen, a market gardener in Isleworth, London. Both raised and named early varieties in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Strawberries love rich, friable soil, so prepare the ground well. Choose a warm, sunny position taking care to avoid frost pockets. Keep young plants and runners well watered until established because strawberries are shallow-rooted. Keep on top of the weeds too. Space your strawberries 15–18 inches (40–45 cm) in rows 2–3 ft apart (60–90 cm) apart to allow enough space for hoeing and picking. This also allows you to water without damaging and splashing fruit. Planting at the correct depth is important: if the crown is planted too deeply it will rot. Too shallow and the plants dry out and die. Strawberries usually spend four or five years on the same patch before being dug up and binned, partly because they lose vigour with age and partly because they tend to pick up viruses. The trick, if possible, is to start a new bed the year before you get rid of the old one. Then there’s no gap.