Well they're not quite fields - yet. And although I don't have John Lennon's lyrical talent I am rather proud of the strawberry patch that is coming into its own in our garden.

Strawberries really should be savoured organically. Conventionally grown strawberries feature in the Environmental Working Group's Dirty Dozen list as they are amongst the fresh produce that contain the highest level of pesticides. Strawberries weigh in at number 4 amongst fruit, after peaches, apples and nectarines, as those containing the highest pesticide loads.

The EWG list was based on the results of almost 43,000 tests for pesticides collected by the US Dept of Agriculture and the FDA betw 2000 and 2005.

A strawberry pesticide study conducted in Germany between 2002 and 2005 tested 593 conventionally grown strawberry samples originating mainly from Germany, Spain, Italy and Morocco. The study found that pesticide residues were detected in 98% of the samples and 93% of samples contained multiple pesticide residues. The German Maximum Residue Levels (MRL) for various pesticides were exceeded by 9% of the samples and mepanipyrim (a fungicide) was the most frequently found violating compound.

Strawberries also contain many beneficial compounds and another study I found analysed the cancer fighting ability of conventional versus organic strawberries. No surprises which growing method won:

"At the highest concentration, the organic extracts inhibited proliferation of colon cancer (HT29) cells by 60 percent and breast cancer (MCF-7) cells by 53.1 percent; the corresponding values for conventional strawberry extracts were 49.7 percent and 37.9 percent respectively. The differences between conventional and organic were statistically highly significant."

Growing your own organic strawberries is easy, the biggest challenge for me has been keeping my two year old son away from the not quite ripe ones!

I bought conventionally grown plantlets in small pots from a local nursery and planted them straight in the ground, but some books I've read recommend growing them in pots to keep pests away from them. Strangely enough the snails that plague the rest of my garden seem to leave them alone. They are however very popular with a certain type of tiny millipede that munches a crater in the strawberry in which to shelter. Slugs can also be a problem and so can birds.

Strawberries are pretty greedy feeders so whether planting them in the ground or in pots you should add lots of organic matter to the soil. I improved the soil by adding plenty of rich home-made compost. They like well drained soil and occasional feeding with either worm tea or a kelp-based plant food will help keep them healthy. Individual plants should be spaced 25 - 30cm apart.

It's a good idea to mulch around the strawberry plants so that the berry does not lie directly on the soil as this makes it more susceptible to disease and pests. Straw is the obvious choice, and probably how strawberries got their name, but other mulches like bark or wood chips work fine. Plastic is the commercial mulch of choice, but this doesn't look great in the home garden.

Strawberries produce runners, but only allow 1 or 2 per plant to take root. The plants should be productive for 3 or 4 years, after which they should be taken out and the healthy runners can be planted elsewhere in the garden as replacement plants.

I'd co-incidentally grown strawberries and borage next to each another and was not too surprised to learn that they are good companion plants. Borage attracts lots of bees which would also be willing pollinators for the strawberry flowers. Another reason may be that borage is rich in calcium, potassium and mineral salts and if the borage leaves are used as a mulch or dug into the soil these minerals would be available to the strawberry plant.

Strawberries apparently have medicinal uses, although why you'd want to do anything other than stuff your face with them is a mystery to me. Strawberry juice can be used externally to counteract sunburn and skin blemishes or on your teeth to whiten them. The leaves and roots are also believed to aid digestion upsets and gout.