Strawberry Patch

Last year I decided that I didn't care if we were only renting the land we lived on, I just wanted a strawberry patch.  I figured that it would make some nice strawberries while we were here, and maybe some future tennet might appreciate them as well.  My original plan was to get a couple different varieties of strawberries so I could enjoy a longer harvest.  Some kinds of strawberries only bear fruit once in the early summer, and some will go on produing strawberries into the fall.  Unfortunatly the only ones I could find were the everbearing variety - so no June bumper crop for me.

Strawberries are perenial plants that will come back every year so they need a more permanent home than a garden bed.  I decided to put them on the far side of my herb patch where they wouldn't be disturbed too much and they could spread as much as they want.  I am secretly hoping they take over the whole herb patch and path and maybe even get into the yard a little.  There can never be too many strawberries in my opinion, and once you taste one picked straight off the plant, you will wonder how they can even call what you buy in the store a strawberry.  Fresh picked strawberries are the sweetest fruit you will ever eat!

So I planted about 30 plants in the corner of the herb garden and proceded to cover them with mulch.

What I didn't expect was that my chickens thought freshly planted strawberry plants were delicious. 
By the time I saw what they were doing, they had eaten about 10 of my brand new plants!

Chicken damage

 

 Lucky for me many of those that I thought were gone for sure sent up new growth a couple weeks later.

Some of my new plants were so happy in thier new home that they started making flowers right away.  As much as I would have loved to eat fresh strawberries that first year, I really wanted the plants to devote their energy to growing strong and making more plants, so I pinched off any flowers that I could find.  I think our total strawberry harvest for last year was two tiny strawberries.  I've read that pinching the flowers the first year makes for a better harvest the following year.  So far it seems to have payed off.  This spring I can see that the strawberries have sent off many runners and have filled in the bed nicely.  They have even expanded their area by sending runners over the edges I had marked with rocks. 

As the temperatures have come up, the strawberries have started to grow again this spring and I hope I will be rewarded with a large harvest in a couple of months.

 

Strawberry patch coming back to life after winter