strawberries

I had three strawberries in secret this week. There were as sweet as the sun can make them. My yard is fulled with strawberry patches because of my changing design of where these plants belong.

Five years ago the home for my three varieties were in the round circles at the base of each fruit tree in the orchard. There was also a bed along the back fence under the espalier fruit trees. This bed of 50 feet in length and about three feet wide created a summer feast for berry pickers like my grandchildren and John and me. I was told from the beginning to get the early June bloomer and the other two types I long forgotten the names but the produced slowly all season.

After a couple years the beds needed some major weeding and I pulled up the bigger plants and divided, pulled off the daughters and found I have more extras than I knew where to put but I managed to stick them into between around the yard for safe keeping. These like patches of course never got moved and now I have patches of strawberries everywhere.

Two years ago, I heard about a special french strawberry and I researched it. Only one place in California offers it for sale and it is really for high end commercial growers. I ordered it for our fruit club and got 20 plants for myself. Mara des Bois is a berry that is available though White Flower Farm but they charge nine dollar a plant! These berries are bloom until the October light is so low and the sun offers no heat anymore, they are the largest and the sweetest of any of my berries. Friends exchange the daughters for valued plant material, they are so prized. I finally decided on the wandering of my strawberries that this one should have a place of honor and be put in a raised bed in the vegetable garden. They were moved to the new home last fall.

In the meantime, the bed along the back fence has totally been moved to the west fence a year ago. The orchard strawberries are now residing along with the roses near the clothe line. I did all these changes because fruit club members told me that my berries were taking the water and nutrients from the fruit trees. My design was not that healthy. The wandering daughters of my strawberries are all over the backyard. At the moment, I must have a thousand blooms or berries forming in this yard.

Last week, I heard in a workshop chickens like the color red best. Five chickens in five minutes could eat a week supply of red berries, I imagine.

I have become a guard now along with the water person, the weeder and the eater.