What to do with strawberries

Our strawberries have gotten their "second wind" after taking a break mid-summer.

Now I'm getting a nice bowl-full every other day or so.

Older Daughter has taken to making an absolutely yummy treat with these beauties: Chocolate-covered strawberries.

She starts by melting some chocolate chips (with a little olive oil added) in a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water, double-boiler style.

She hulls the strawberries, then carefully dries them. Chocolate apparently doesn't stick to wet strawberries.

Then she drops the strawberries, one at a time, into the chocolate and kinda rolls them around. After that she lays them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

She puts these, still on the cookie sheet, in the freezer for about 15 minutes, then they go in the fridge. It's a nice treat for a hot day, and a great way to use up an abundance of strawberries.

Garden update

Since we've deer-proofed our garden by installing 10-1/2-foot-high nuclear deer fencing, some readers have asked for an update on what's growing.

Unfortunately we completed the fencing too late to plant some of the things we wanted to plant (notably corn), and we also didn't get the full number of raised beds installed. Bottom line, only about three-quarters of the potential space is currently planted, and some of the planted beds aren't thriving. Nor is the drip irrigation system yet hooked up, though at least the underground infrastructure is in place.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's a wide shot of the garden as it currently looks:

In the foreground are five beds of garlic. Another two weeks or so, and they will be ready to harvest.

Interspersed in several of the garlic beds are volunteer potatoes (guess what I planted there last year?). I seldom remove volunteers. They're too much fun.

Not counting the volunteers, I planted eight beds of potatoes. Last year I had planted six beds, and the deer ate the leaves down to nubbins. Discouraged, I stopped watering – and yet still managed to harvest about sixty pounds of medium-sized potatoes (i.e., about ten pounds per bed, an abysmal return). This year, with the vegetation undisturbed and with regular watering, I'll be interested in seeing how much we harvest.

I planted two beds of onions...

...and one bed of green (bunching) onions. The bunching onions got a hard start because I didn't get around to weeding out the wheat (which grows from the straw mulch) until quite late, so most of the plants are still playing catch-up.

I have four beds of strawberries.

I'm picking a bowl of strawberries every few days. Two of the beds are Fort Laramie berries, and two are Ozark Beauty.

I had a bunch of tomato plants I grew from seed that had been sitting on the deck until the garden was fenced. As a result, they were stunted when I transplanted them. They're growing, but they're not very big. I photographed this bed before I weeded out the wheat grass.

They looked happier after I weeded.

The broccoli, which I also started from seed, has fared worst of all. As with the tomatoes, they were stunted from the start.

Then, to make things worse, the poor plants came down with a massive infestation of flea beetles, tiny jumping beetles that suck all the juices out of the leaves.

I'm starting to get the flea beetles under control, but it's too late to expect much (if anything) from the plants. In fact, I don't think they'll survive, which is a shame since broccoli is my favorite vegetable.

I have a volunteer sunflower growing in one of the potato beds. No doubt a seed from our winter bird feed was dropped here.

I've had volunteer sunflowers grow before, but always the deer got to them. This time it will be fun to watch it mature.

I also have a couple of volunteer tomatoes growing in yet another potato bed, the one in which I had grown (or tried to grow) tomatoes last year. As always, despite being cloched with deer netting, the deer got the tomatoes.

Last year I grew cherry, paste, and beefsteak tomatoes. I have no idea what kind these volunteers may be.

By far the most successful plants are the spaghetti squash.

I've never grown spaghetti squash before, and I made a grave error when planting. I planted twelve seeds in one bed, forgetting one critical factor: Spaghetti squash are related to zucchini, which of course is famously productive. Imagine planting twelve zucchini plants, and you'll start to understand the scope of the issue. I have huge numbers of spaghetti squashes coming in.

And with many flowers still blooming, I can expect more.

And then, comically, I even have a volunteer spaghetti squash growing in one of the potato beds.

(If you're wondering how I can get a volunteer squash from something I've never planted before, it's because in the fall, when I empty the compost tumbler, I bury the compost in the garden beds. A seed from a squash we had once eaten for lunch sprouted.)

As you can see, there is room for one more row of nine beds (two of which are in place but unplanted).

Clearly the game-changer in the garden is the installation of the deer fencing. Next year, we'll get the rest of the garden beds installed and the drip irrigation system hooked up. I'll be able to plant early and, hopefully, realize the full potential of this growing space.

The maximum this garden can hold is 35 beds (three rows of nine beds, one row of eight beds). However we've designed it that, should the need arise, we can expand and double the capacity to 70+ beds by extending the garden length-wise. We have enough drip irrigation supplies to accommodate that possibility as well.

Obviously getting a garden installed has been a multi-year project, and many other projects have taken precedence. Still, it's nice to have a proper garden at last.

Growing strawberries

Recently a reader posted a question as follows: "I need some help please. If you would. I live in N. Idaho and for the love of me, I cannot grow strawberries. Yours seem to flourish with great wonder. Could you please post about how you plant, fertilize and water your berries so that they produce so well. I've put in new plants. Used berry fertilizer and sometimes manure. Mulched and watered regularly and still nothing. I very much would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions. Thank you."

Oof. That's a tough one because, I'm sorry to say, I don't do anything special for the strawberries once they're established (except to protect them from the deer, of course). I don't mean to sound flippant, but I've just never had any problems with them (except for the deer, of course).

That said, here's how we prepare strawberry beds and strawberry plants.

In both our previous home and our current one, our native dirt is heavy with clay – sticky mud in the spring and rock-hard in the summer. That's one of the reasons we gave up trying to grow anything in the ground and switched to raised beds. To these raised beds, we add a 3-2-1 mixture of native dirt, compost, and sand (three parts dirt, two parts compost, one part sand), plus any enhancements we have on hand (leaves, composted sawdust, etc.). The sand is a permanent way to keep the clay broken up; the compost obviously adds nutrients; and the native dirt is the most economical medium since we already have it. Now that we have livestock, future compost will come from our own animals.

When building our gardens, since we're working on a large scale, we'll often bring in sand and compost by the dump-truck load from landscaping companies. Sometimes we'll even bring in topsoil (which, for the record, is often no better than the native dirt; we've been known to dub it "top clay").

With these elements mounded up, Don will use the tractor to mix. He'll scoop the 3-2-1 ratio of elements into a pile with the tractor bucket, then use the tractor rototiller to mix thoroughly. Once this is prepped, he'll bucket it up and scoop it into the raised beds.

Since strawberries are a permanent plant, and since soil settles over time, we tend to overfill the strawberry beds to allow for that. Then it's a matter of planting the strawberries.

If you buy bareroot strawberry plants, begin by soaking the bundle of plants in water for a couple of hours to rehydrate the roots and break dormancy. After this, trim a couple inches off the bottom of the roots. Trimming not only allows plants to be planted more easily, but it allows the roots to be fanned out properly for best results (less crowding). It also stimulates root growth. Here are two plants: Top with untrimmed roots, bottom with trimmed roots.

When planting, scoop out a hole and fan out the roots. Don't bury the crown of the plants. Pat firm and voilà.

I used to mulch strawberries, but I don't any longer. Mulching seems to prevent runners from taking root; and the more runners that take root, the quicker the plants will create a thick canopy and shade the soil from getting too dry. In essence, left alone, strawberries become self-mulching.

I never fertilize my strawberries. It's not that I'm opposed to it; it's just that I never think about it, and they seem to produce well despite that. The most I'll do is add compost in the spring; and even then, often I don't.

The big debate in the strawberry world is June-bearing vs. everbearing. I prefer everbearing because I like getting fruit the whole summer. However I've come to prefer everbearing for another reason, and this is purely anecdotal.

In our last garden, we had both everbearing and June-bearing varieties. The everbearing strawberries, once they were established, produced loads and loads of berries, year after year after year. The June-bearing beds produced heavily for the first three years, and then sorta gave up. The plants were perfectly healthy, but they produced no fruit. As in, zero. After three years of no fruit, it got to the point where I just ripped them up and used the beds for something else. I don't know if I did something wrong with those strawberries, or if June bearers tend to do that anyway, but I've come to prefer everbearing. Just my two cents.

In summer weather, I water the strawberries often – every day if the weather is hot, and every couple of days if the temps are moderate.

Right now I have two varieties of strawberries: My beloved Fort Laramies, and some Ozark Beauties I'm experimenting with (and so far am very pleased by).

I don't know if this information will be helpful to the reader, but I hope so.

Strawberry craters

I have four strawberry beds in the new garden area, planted with potted runners from our old strawberry beds. Because it's fenced against cows but not deer, the beds are hooped and netted to keep hungry deer from munching the plants.

In one of the beds – just one – I kept finding mysterious craters in the dirt.

Day after day, these little craters would appear afresh. (They would more or less get destroyed every evening when I watered.)

I found no holes or tunnels, as might be expected with voles or other burrowing creatures. Nor, crucially, were the plants themselves ever harmed: they were not uprooted or eaten. What on earth was causing these little dirt craters, and why?

I received my answer one afternoon when I went into the garden and surprised a quail family inside the net, happily taking dirt baths among the strawberry plants. Evidently they had found a quail-sized chink in the netting and were making themselves at home.

When they saw me, they began a frantic effort to escape, leaving behind a few telltale feathers.

I find I don't mind. As I mentioned, they're not hurting the plants and might even be eating any insects that would. Let them enjoy their dirt baths.

Alternative strawberries

Our strawberries are starting to bloom.

We don't expect ripe fruit for a while yet, but it's yet another sure sign of spring.

At her European duty station, Younger Daughter has a balcony off her apartment where she keeps a few potted strawberry plants. Interestingly, though, many of the flowers aren't white.

Some are light pink.

Some are dark pink.

Some are dark red.

And yes, some are white.

They're all strawberries – she regularly gets fruit – but I have no idea why the blossoms vary in color to such a degree. Does anyone know?

The nuclear strawberries are still at it

Last year I was joking about how our strawberries are"nuclear strawberries" because they were still bearing into October and November. Well, they're at it again.

If the beds look sloppy, it's because I'm potting many of the runners with plans to transplant them into the new garden beds. At some point, I'm going to take my chances and also transplant the established strawberries into the new beds, since we want to dismantle this little driveway garden and transfer everything to the permanent garden. But that's a post for another time.

So here it is almost mid-October, and the strawberries are still producing. They've slowed down a bit, but haven't stopped.

They seem to ripen in a different manner this time of year, a sort of "bottoms up" method.

I'm collecting a bowl-full about every five days. These I hull, slice, and freeze.

While a lot of people turn their strawberry crop into jam, I don't bother. None of us are jam or jelly fans, so strawberry jam would just go uneaten.

But sliced frozen strawberries? We have a million uses for them.