"H" wrote in message
...
snip
Done that .. and read the catalogs. Unfortunately, the marketing hype
tends
to make all strawbs 'sweet', 'delicious' etc as opposed to some being
'plain', 'not that sweet', etc. So I hoped for some info from people who
had
experience of growing them.

Or maybe they are all stunning fruit ;-)

Well I guess that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' but if it helps, we
have tried quite a few varieties.

'Emily' was a smasher and even cropped well after living for 7 months in a
carrier bag ( we moved house and it took ages to get the garden organised).
'Cambridge favourite was good for us last year and cropped well and had
'pretty' berries. I know that sounds like an odd comment but we also grew
'Symphony' which looked painfully stretched if that's possible for a
strawberry. It also had a lot of white top on which, to me, is very
'supermarket'. 'Aromel' is good in a sunny year but last year's continual
rain until mid August gave us a very poor crop.

We get ours from Mr Fothergills and have always been very pleased, but my
Mum uses Ken Muir and thinks they're fab too.

Hope this helps.

--A