Strawberry Cirafine (everbearing) - Fragaria ananassa

The Cirafine strawberry is a variety with good productivity that produces elongated ovoid fruits of a beautiful, homogeneous red colour. They are medium-sized, with a sweet, fragrant, and juicy flavour, reminiscent of the Mara des Bois. In fact, this variety was obtained by the Ciref in 2002 through cross-breeding with the Mara des Bois. It retains its flavor and has better post-harvest shelf life. It is also resistant to powdery mildew and has intermediate resistance to Phytophthora, Anthracnose, Verticillium, and Rhizopus. The Cirafine strawberry is a reliable choice for any vegetable garden!

Strawberries can be consumed in multiple ways: they can be eaten raw, with sugar, cream, or sliced thinly and dried, then incorporated into muesli or yogurt. If you have a bountiful harvest, you can also make jams, sauces, pies, ice creams, or sorbets. You can also freeze strawberries.

There are 3 categories of strawberry varieties:

- Woodland strawberries or perpetual strawberries, which produce small fruits from June to October.

- Non-repeat varieties with large fruits, which flower only once a year in spring and produce very large fruits around June.

- Repeat varieties with large fruits, which flower twice a year or continuously, producing large fruits from June to October.

Indeed, the wild strawberry or woodland strawberry, present during Roman times and the Middle Ages, was crossed in the 18th century with a species brought back from Chile, resulting in different varieties with large fruits through successive selections.

The strawberry is a hardy perennial belonging to the Rosaceae family. This variety has a stout habit, with persistent, trifoliate, ovate, and dentate leaves. It produces small white flowers with a golden centre, which transform into large red fruits. Botanically speaking, strawberries are pseudocarps, with the achenes (seeds) visible beneath the skin.

For harvesting, pick the fruits as they ripen, every 2 or 3 days, ideally in the morning. Strawberries are delicate, so pick them with their stalk by pinching the stem 1 to 2 cm (0.5 to 1in) above it. The texture of the fruit is a good indicator of its ripeness. It should be firm and slightly soft to the touch. Strawberries are rich in vitamins and minerals. They can cause skin irritation for some people as they stimulate the release of histamine in the body.