Since I enjoy cooking, most of my garden is comprised of foods or spices used in mainly Italian cuisine, and a lot of kale for the bunny. But one thing I knew I wanted was strawberries. Strawberries are the only fruit that you can harvest within months of planting them, and they are delicious and versatile. There are three types of strawberries:
June-bearing Strawberries produce one large crop in early summer (around June). These plants give the largest fruits, but only once. They are less resistant to the cold, though, and the fruit may be damaged by frosts. Look for names like Honeoye, Guardian, Kent, Redchief, Delite, Jewel, Mesabi, A.C. Wendy, Cabot, Bloominden Gem, Carskill, and Geneva.
Ever-bearing Strawberries produce two large crops: one in early summer, and one in the fall. These are a bit more resilient to cold than June-bearing. Look for names like Quinalt, Ogallala, and Fort Laramie.
Day-neutral Strawberries produce a continuous supply of fruit, ready to harvest every 6 weeks or so, from the summer through the fall. Blossoming will slow or stop in extremely hot weather, but will resume again when the temp comes back down. The fruit is smaller than the other varieties, but boasts a near- constant supply and an excellent burst of flavor in every fruit. These require constant fertilization and continuous removal of the runners. Look for names like Tribute, Tristar, and Fern. For my first attempt at strawberries, I chose this type, specifically the Tribute cultivar.
June-bearing Strawberries produce one large crop in early summer (around June). These plants give the largest fruits, but only once. They are less resistant to the cold, though, and the fruit may be damaged by frosts. Look for names like Honeoye, Guardian, Kent, Redchief, Delite, Jewel, Mesabi, A.C. Wendy, Cabot, Bloominden Gem, Carskill, and Geneva.
Ever-bearing Strawberries produce two large crops: one in early summer, and one in the fall. These are a bit more resilient to cold than June-bearing. Look for names like Quinalt, Ogallala, and Fort Laramie.
Day-neutral Strawberries produce a continuous supply of fruit, ready to harvest every 6 weeks or so, from the summer through the fall. Blossoming will slow or stop in extremely hot weather, but will resume again when the temp comes back down. The fruit is smaller than the other varieties, but boasts a near- constant supply and an excellent burst of flavor in every fruit. These require constant fertilization and continuous removal of the runners. Look for names like Tribute, Tristar, and Fern. For my first attempt at strawberries, I chose this type, specifically the Tribute cultivar.
Bare Root Strawberries are just that: the bare roots. You can order them on the Internet, and they arrive as you see in the picture above. That's the root system of 25 Tribute strawberry plants, nearly dry and in a dormant state. If you can't plant them immediately, add just enough water to keep the roots moist (NOT soaking), and store them in a cool place. You can order bare root plants of many berries, bushes, and vines, such as blueberries, rose bushes, and even grapes!
When you're finally ready to plant your bare root plants in your garden, you first have to wake them up. Get rid of the rubber band and carefully separate the plants, taking care not to pull apart plants through the middle of their crown, which would kill them. Once the plants are separated, you take hand shears and cut the roots off to about 5" long, then let them all soak in WARM water for 1-2 hours. This warm bath brings them out of dormancy, and the newly exposed roots begin soaking up that water immediately. As with seeds and their soil, it's not the temperature outside, but the temperature of the potting medium that is most important, hence the warm water. All strawberry varieties need full sun, preferably 8 or more hours a day, so my dedicated strawberry bed is at the end of my row, where it will get sun from as soon as the sun peeks over the mountains to when it disappears on the other horizon. In the middle of summer, they should be getting nearly 12 continuous hours of direct sunlight.
Strawberries love a nutrient-rich, well-draining soil. That's why they do so well in raised beds, and Mel's Mix is a feast for these little guys. The traditional spacing for these strawberries is 12"-30" apart, but that is more relevant if you are growing huge crops of them and leaving them to their own devices. Strawberries propagate by sending out runners. I'll talk more about runners later, but for now I'll say that we'll be removing all the runners, keeping the plants confined to a smaller area. Because we'll be giving so much attention to them, the SFG Handbook says we can plant as many as FOUR plants in each square foot! My dedicated strawberry bed is 2'x3', so I planted 24 root systems. I also had a few roots left over, so I planted them in an adjacent bed temporarily. If those take hold, and any of these don't make it, I'll replace the good ones for the bad ones and discard the rest.
Strawberries are VERY sensitive to planting depth. The "crown" is the thick section at the top of the root system where the leaf stems start. When planting them out, you have to spread the roots out into a nice array, then fill in the soil around the plant and only cover the crown halfway. This is crucially important. If the crown is too deep and the stems are buried, the plant will rot. If the crown is planted too shallow and the tops of the roots are exposed, the plant will dry out and die. And we're talking about a crown that is only 1/2" tall, too. Once the plans start growing, we'll see how I did.
Strawberries are VERY sensitive to planting depth. The "crown" is the thick section at the top of the root system where the leaf stems start. When planting them out, you have to spread the roots out into a nice array, then fill in the soil around the plant and only cover the crown halfway. This is crucially important. If the crown is too deep and the stems are buried, the plant will rot. If the crown is planted too shallow and the tops of the roots are exposed, the plant will dry out and die. And we're talking about a crown that is only 1/2" tall, too. Once the plans start growing, we'll see how I did.
As strawberries grow, their weight will make the plant sag. If the fruit is allowed to rest on the soil itself, they will spoil and begin to rot. Because of that, you need a barrier to keep the fruit off the soil. The oldest way is to simply mulch around the plants, tucking dry straw or needles underneath the plants and giving the fruits something clean to sleep on. The newer way is only slightly varied, using landscapers cloth instead of mulch. I cut an X in the cloth where each plant was located, then laid the cloth down and poked the crowns up through it. It is suggested to tack the edges of the cloth down with landscaping pins (they look like giant staples). I found that the soil mix in my raised beds was so loose and rich that the pins had nothing to hold onto. Instead, I just used some fist-sized rocks to weigh the edges down.
Strawberry Runners are what the baby plants are called. As the plants grown, they will send out "vines" that will have blossom clusters along the length. Each one of those clusters is a potentially new strawberry plant. The purpose of any species is propagation, so while the strawberry plant may produce some excellent fruit, it really cares nothing about it. Instead, it cares on passing on its lineage by investing its energy into its offspring. When those runners shoot out, I'm going to be committing infanticide and cutting them all off. This will keep the mother plant's energy focused on the production of fruit, not children. This is an ongoing maintenance, and I'll be updating as it happens later on. So, my Tribute Strawberry plants went into my raised bed in the afternoon of Friday, March 28, 2014.
There are plenty of entities in Minecraft just waiting to spawn and waltz all through your garden. I will sit there in my farmhouse during the night, watching creepers make a beeline for me, crushing plant after plant on their way to envelope me in their explodey love. I don't dare go out there, though. I might beat a few of them back, but if just one gets his fuse started, my entire garden will be wiped out. The next day, I'll go inspect my poor crops, replant what I need to, then head over to the nearest forest. I'll fell a few trees, get back to my crafting table, and begin making fence posts. By encircling my crop beds with fences and setting up some good lighting on my property, I can keep all those nightly mobs off my plants and away from my livelihood.
In real life, we face the same thing with strawberries. Animals LOVE strawberries, almost as much as we do. Deer and rabbits can be a problem, but the biggest ravager of berry beds is BIRDS. Those winged pests will land en masse and clean you out before you can say "griefing!" In the same way that I protect my crops in Minecraft, I protect my plants in my back yard- with a fence. I built a simple 12" tall frame to fit over the top of my strawberry bed, and covered it in bird netting. You can use any small fencing, as long as the birds can't get through it. Bird netting is a cheap, plastic netting that is UV-rated, so the plastic doesn't give way when the ovarian thieves come knocking. If you just lay the netting over the plants, the birds will just poke their beaks through and do as much damage as they can, so by netting over a frame, we keep them at a safe distance. The cage is custom made (and cuuustom fit) to the raised bed, so it stays on very well, but lifts off for me to get to it without having to add any hinges or anything like that.
In real life, we face the same thing with strawberries. Animals LOVE strawberries, almost as much as we do. Deer and rabbits can be a problem, but the biggest ravager of berry beds is BIRDS. Those winged pests will land en masse and clean you out before you can say "griefing!" In the same way that I protect my crops in Minecraft, I protect my plants in my back yard- with a fence. I built a simple 12" tall frame to fit over the top of my strawberry bed, and covered it in bird netting. You can use any small fencing, as long as the birds can't get through it. Bird netting is a cheap, plastic netting that is UV-rated, so the plastic doesn't give way when the ovarian thieves come knocking. If you just lay the netting over the plants, the birds will just poke their beaks through and do as much damage as they can, so by netting over a frame, we keep them at a safe distance. The cage is custom made (and cuuustom fit) to the raised bed, so it stays on very well, but lifts off for me to get to it without having to add any hinges or anything like that.