Delicious, Sun-Warmed Strawberries

Parker's bowl of juicy strawberries.

When we bought our house four years ago, one of the biggest attractions for me was the backyard, which included a gardening area, as well as an already growing strawberry patch, raspberry patch and grapes for juicing. 

Every year my strawberry patch has given me different results.  I planted June bearing 'Fragaria' strawberries in late June 2007.  We might have gotten a handful of strawberries that year, but then for the next couple of years, the crop was plentiful. 

Mom says that she remembers coming over for dinner and seeing a big bowl of strawberries on the table that were just picked and ready for eating.  I think I bottled some strawberry jam in 2009, but mostly we just love to eat them fresh, warm, right out of the patch, or on waffles with whipped cream, or strawberry shortcake is always a favorite too.  (My mouth is watering.)

There is a lot of care that goes into growing strawberries, especially in preparation in the Spring.

First, I have learned that they need lots and lots of sunshine.  I have had to keep my smoke tree growing nearby pruned way back to enable the sunshine to reach my strawberry patch.

Also, they need to be watered frequently, at least twice a week, and while they are producing heavily, I water them probably every other day.

Strawberries need to be fertilized in the spring.  There is a special berry fertilizer that is good for strawberries and raspberries.  It is 1/3 ammonium sulfate, 1/3 Miracle Grow Azalea food, and 1/3 ironite.  I mix this up and sprinkle it on like I am salting a steak, not too much.

One thing that I have decided to do is to plant some strawberries every year.  The plants are only good for three or four years, then they die or quit giving berries.  But if I plant a dozen or so every year then I should always have a good crop. Mom say Cooks greenhouse off of Geneva and 1600 North in Orem sells pots for $8 full of twenty bare root strawberry plants.  She says that they are not pretty to look at, but that if you buy the plants with leaves and blossoms on they are much more expensive, maybe $1 each plant. 

You can buy June-bearers which (obviously) give their biggest crop in June.  Or you can buy ever-bearing strawberries which give you strawberries all season.  This year I bought the ever-bearing Albion strawberries.  The one advantage to the June bearers is that if you are planning to freeze them or do jam, you get a bigger harvest all at one time.  With the ever-bearers, the harvest is spread out over several months.  I have been told that if every thing is done just right, you can get 150-200 berries off of one, yes one, strawberry plant.  Now I have yet to see results even close to that, but I will keep trying.

After pulling all the dang grass out of the patch, I can plant the bare roots.

After I plant the strawberries, I keep a good watch on them.  They send out runners with baby plants on them, which is how they reproduce.  But if I keep these runners pruned back, the energy of the plant will go into producing berries instead of new plants.

In the last couple of years, I have thinned the patch down quite a bit in the spring.  But I have not had good results in doing this.  I have found that it only creates more room for grass and weeds that love to grow in my strawberry patch.  And they are not invited.   Some of the old plants will need to be removed, but then I will just fill in the spaces with new plants from the nursery. 

After I get everything weeded and planted, I will sprinkle Sevin dust around the entire patch to eliminate pests.  I hate to use poison, but I do not want to share my hard earned harvest with snails, slugs, or sow bugs, which also love strawberries.  If I do this early, before the strawberries start to grow, then I don't have to worry about poison on the berries.  After this, I will probably mulch with bark or even with grass clippings to cut down on the weeds that will continue to torment me throughout the summer.

Wow!!  It sounds like a lot of work, but a bowl full of delicious, sun-warmed, juicy strawberries is definitely worth it.

The Square Foot Gardening Experiment

Dawson and Parker "helping" to mix the special soil.



For Christmas I got a book called "The All New Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew.  I am so excited to test the method and see if it really produces the harvest promised.

Here's the theory....  With the raised beds and perfect soil (one third compost, one third peat moss, and one third vermiculite), I should be able to get so many more veggies out of my garden.  Supposedly, I can plant all the garden in 20% of the space and still get as much produce, or more.

You should come by and feel the soil.  It is so soft and fluffy.  It will be so easy to pull weeds from this soil if they grow.  Supposedly, I have planted the squares so heavily that the weeds will not have room to grow.

I just have to keep the seeds and plants watered quite frequently.  I am still considering how to do that.  For today, I just watered it with my watering can.  If it gets too burdensome, then I will put a drip line in the box.

There may be one flaw in the whole theory.  Root depth.  We'll see if tomatoes and other things can grow in only 7.5 inches of soil.  (It's deeper than it looks in the picture.  About half of the box is buried in the gravel.)  There is landscape fabric at the bottom, so there is no more room to grow.  The author of the book says that you just need to stake things well and they will be fine.  We will see.  That's why I put my spring garden in the box because most of those things don't need lots of depth for root growth.

Baby seedlings just starting to poke their little heads out of the soil.

My spring garden is in and it is April 12th.  I planted peas, carrots, beets, onions, radishes, mesclun (salad), swiss chard, cilantro, broccoli, and tomatoes.  Ok, the tomatoes are the odd balls.  They are not supposed to be planted until the middle of May, but they are in walla-waters and we will see if they survive the cool spring temperatures.

If this method works, I may just convert my whole garden to Square Foot Gardening!!

It looks so tidy and organized.  Wish my house was.  Its definitely more fun to garden than to house clean.

My beautiful Spring garden after just one month.  So far, so good.