You and I have talked of many things, of garden hopes and garden dreams and plants and springs but I don't think we have ever talked about the luscious strawberry. Mom and Dad always had a strawberry patch, and going out to pick strawberries was one of my tasks during the gardening season. We always had beautiful berries, and I recall how disappointed I would be when I lifted the leaves protecting a particularly ruby-red berry, only to find that a bird had been munching there already!
But who could blame the birds? Strawberries look delectable both before and after they are picked. Really, what could taste more spring-like than a bowl of mashed strawberries mixed with cream? Thinking back to how delicious that tasted, paired up with Mom's delicious home-made buns still warm and spread with butter well, there was just nothing like that heavenly treat.
If you're thinking you might like to plant some strawberries in your garden, I did a little research about them, so here's a crash course.
Let's go back through the mists of time to France in the 1750's. A curious gardener named Amedee-Francoise Frezier crossed plants from North America and Chile, happily resulting in the first garden strawberry. Wild strawberries existed, of course, but the cultivated plants became the plant of choice in early gardens.
If you look at garden catalogues, you might see strawberries that are marked "June bearing" or "day-neutral". Don't be alarmed; these are terms used to describe how much light the plant needs to produce fruit. June-bearing plants produce their fruit in late spring or early summer; ever bearing plants produce several crops over the summer, mainly early summer and late summer; and day-neutral produce all along.
Strawberry plants should be planted on raised beds or mounds. When you set out the plants, be sure to cover the roots with soil, but leave the crown of the plant above soil level. In the first year, as tough as it is to do, pinch off the blooms until the middle of summer, and then the energy of the plant will be used to settling in and getting established.
Strawberries like full sun and rich soil, enhanced with mulch or well-rotted manure. They like good drinks of water, especially when the fruit begins forming, but when you're watering them, be sure not to water the leaves, just the roots. You don't want any fungus problems. The main strawberry plants are called the mother plants; in time, they will send out runners with little strawberry plants at the end. These are called daughter plants, and can be snipped and planted to increase the size of your strawberry patch.
Now for the bad news. Strawberries are prone to many diseases, and I read that over 200 types of bugs and pests love strawberries as much as we do.. They might be the garden princesses that are a little high maintenance, but strawberries are wonderful additions to any garden. !
The Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be holding their next meeting on Wednesday, May 16. Our special guest will be Don Stein, executive director of the Godfrey Dean, speaking to us about how to photograph plants in our gardens. I know that many of you take pictures throughout the season, and Don will have some great ideas of how we can better capture images of those lovely little plants that we baby along from May till September!
