Berry Days

Right now (as this has been such a rainy, springless season that local crops are about two months behind), one of my daily tasks is to harvest our strawberries, so I can attest that the flavour of home-grown berries is far superior to the large, tasteless, red lumps that supermarkets carry out of season. Strawberries alone are a good enough reason to get into urban or suburban farming if you have the space.

I grow 'Tristar' and 'Quinault' everbearing strawberries in a six by eight foot raised bed in my backyard. According to the Lassen Canyon Strawberry Growers at http://www.snowcrest.net/lcninc/, 'Tristar' berries have wonderful flavor, are an excellent variety for home gardeners, commercial growers and roadside markets, and are excellent for use in patio gardens and/or hanging baskets. 'Quinault' is another cultivar that they recommend for home growers, describing it as a newer variety that produces fruit on unrooted runners in just 4-5 weeks after planting. They also say that this variety makes an excellent ground cover or can be used as border plantings. This may well be; I've never tried it as I grow both of these varieties for their taste.

If you're growing strawberries for the first time, I recommend growing them in a raised bed that you're not going to try to grow anything else in. Strawberries are vigorous growers, and given the right conditions of a sunny spot and the proper amounts of water and manure, they'll spread to fill whatever space you've put them in, crowding out whatever other plant dares to get in their way. Using a raised bed helps guard against slugs, especially if you surround it with a barrier of diatomaceous earth, crushed eggshells, or gravel. Some people use wood or bark chips, but I've found that mulches with bark or wood chips quickly turn into sowbug cities in this climate, and as sowbugs feast on anything that's starting to rot, they'll eat the ends off strawberries too. (I love them in my compost, but not in my berry bed.) A raised bed will also help protect your lawn. Both of the varieties I grow are prolific producers of suckers that see lawns as just another opportunity. With my raised bed, I just mow off the suckers when I cut the grass.

My strawberry bed produces enough berries for four people to eat a bowl of berries every other night. Normally, the Tristar and Quinault varieties I grow produce fruit from the end of May through approximately the middle of August (unlike non-everbearing strawberries, which have a flush of fruit, normally in June, and don't produce much after). When you're thinking about the size of your bed, consider how many berries your family is likely to eat and how often you're willing to harvest them. Ripe berries won't wait; if you don't pick them, they'll start to rot or mold.

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