Strawberries and Peas

This year I took a good look at the old strawberry row replete with weeds that were very well established.  I decided it was time to start a new row.  This had two major positives right off the bat.  It meant I didn’t have to weed the old row and the weeds would definitely have a slower start on the new row.  On the other hand it’s a fair amount of labor to put in a new row if you do it well.  So I compromised by putting in a partial row on the theory that even unweeded the old row was going to yield some berries.  

I usually plant a double row with 1 foot spacing so even a partial row is 75 plants to be planted by my extensive labor force (me).  The ground has to be well-tilled so it has all the usual problems of trying to get plants in the ground around the April rainstorms.  I finally got them in about mid-April.  And then added pine bark mulch to try to suppress the weeds for a while.  I’ve used straw in the past but it’s tough to find bales with no grass seeds.  

As it turns out we did get a fair amount of strawberries from the old plants and now the new plants are beginning to yield.

The New Strawberry Row

Now a better man than I would have pinched off the blossoms so that the plants could go stronger for next year but I confess to limits in my ability to delay gratification.

Earliglow Strawberries

The varieties I put in are not particularly special (Earliglow, Allstar, and Sparkle) but hey anything you plant in your home garden is so much better than what you find in the supermarket.  And there is nothing quite like picking a hot strawberry and eating it in the garden.

Another daily yield right now is coming from the salad crops.  The combination of actually weeding them and the regular rainfall has given us some of the best greens we’ve had in a while.

Salad Crops in Early June

And with peas and asparagus there has been ample reward to going out to the garden every day… 🙂