Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Outta control

Every time I plant a strawberry bed I tell myself that I will keep it up this time. After a year or two it always ends up looking like this.I don't know how it happens, really. It seems as though one day the plants are all in nice tidy rows, and then, suddenly one day, I notice that there is just a big mat of strawberry plants. Where do they all come from?? ;-)
So, I decided to try the hill system instead, and this time, I really will keep up with it. Ahem. In the meantime, doesn't it look nice? And it is much easier to mulch too.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My Mom has the "perfect" strawberry patch. They are all in rows and she keeps the runners trimmed and in subsequent rows. When the "mother plant" gets a little old & starts producing "inferior"(??) strawberries it gets plucked out and the process just keeps replenishing itself. It's all a little too managed for me.
My strawberry patch was just a willy-nilly mess. We moved our strawberries & raspberries in the fall so I'm not sure what this year will bring, but normally it's a free for all.... get them while you can... The boys (who oversleep) get ticked at the girls who are early risers and eat to their hearts content straight from the patch. I rarely get the chance to pick enough to make anything with them. I am curious to see how the hills work out for you. We mulched ours with straw one year and ended up with a whole bunch of bugs. What have you mulched yours with?
Rebecca :)

Anonymous said...

I never have any luck with strawberries. I would like to think it's the sandy Long Island soil, but there are some huge strawberry farms out east so it must be me.

The 2nd batch of yogurt came out great! Yay! I made smoothies with the 1st one so it wasn't a total loss. No more plastic containers!

Heather said...

Glad to hear that the yogurt turned out. Another thing that you can do with a batch that doesn't work is to use it in place of buttermilk in baking. It is good in blueberry muffins.

Rebecca, I just used some dried grass that the boys collected from the neighbours. It seems like it will work well.

Anonymous said...

I take the runners in the fall and plant them in pots, leave them attached to the mother plant until the spring, and then start a new patch, I think I'll try hilling too. I also planted garlic in the patch in the fall, I read that it helps keep the bugs away.