KIRKEND NURSERY

Soft fruits and vegetables
Kingscross, KA27 8RD
Contact: Gavin Mutch or Tracy Warwick,
Tel: 01770 700 683

 

What is a strawberry? Hard and sour, or soft and sweet. It depends where and how it was grown. Fast grown in Spain, picked unripe and transported for days in the chill of a refrigerated lorry, the chances are it will be the hard/sour variety. Year round strawberries from the global fruit farm provide us with a dubious quality throughout the winter months, but come summer a different strawberry hits the shelves: soft, succulent, sweet and flavoursome. I'm talking, of course, about a slow-grown, mature Scottish berry. The kind of strawberry which Gavin Mutch grows on his three acres of fruit farm just north of Whiting Bay.

This year 10,000 strawberry plants will start ripening at Kirkend around the beginning of June. He has chosen the variety Elsanta for its good flavour and high yield. First developed for Dutch glasshouse growing, rather than a Scottish summer, Elsanta has turned out to be the most successful variety grown in the last decade and now makes up 90% of the Scottish crop. The large orange-red berry has a deep pinkish red flesh with a good balance of sweet/sourness when fully ripe. It is neither too soft nor too firm, squashing easily like a rasp. Gradual slow-ripening of the fruit, in Scotland's long hours of summer daylight, gives these strawberries, and all other Scottish soft berries, their premium edge.

This is his third summer growing fruit and vegetables on the island where he spent much of his childhood. Trained in horticulture in Aberdeen, he decided to have a go at growing as much variety as possible. He has, besides his strawberry crop, established several thousand raspberry canes in poly tunnels and in the field, plus a lesser amount of blackcurrants, gooseberries, tayberries and loganberries. There are rows of potatoes growing at one side of the field. At the far end he points out an asparagus patch and behind it some tall canes entwined with the creeping tendrils of runner beans.

He also has carrots, potatoes, onions and other vegetables which are still experimental. 'But you must come, and see my pumpkins,' he says. And he lifts a huge leaf to reveal a giant orange pumpkin lurking beneath.

Product Range: Soft fruits including Elsanta strawberries, Glen Moy and Glen Prosen Raspberries. Vegetables including potatoes, runner beans, asparagus and pumpkins.

Distribution: From 'Fruit Barrow' at the roadside beside the nursery. Pick Your Own in July (check for availability), Village Shop and Bay Stores (Whiting Bay), Murchies (Lamlash), Alldays and Good Food Shop (Brodick). Open all year.