Speed-Raising Your Strawberry Crop!

 What can you do when your strawberry beds are pretty much played out, but you haven’t started any crowns for next year?

This summer, I found myself in this exact situation: our garden had only one strawberry bed (which was marginal at best), and the other three beds were completely petered out. This past spring, I had never found the time to buy any new crowns, much less plant them.

I was left with two options. I could either resign myself to no berries next spring…or start my own crowns!

But first, a little about growing strawberries:

Strawberries are one of those crops that require a fair amount of planning. In early spring, you plant bare-root strawberry crowns from the nursery, and keep your baby plants well-watered and mulched that summer and fall while they develop their root systems. Any flowers they produce, you pinch off—so the plant is continuing to put its energy in the roots, and not in fruiting.

The following spring, the now vigorous plants will begin to sprout flowers, and soon you’ll see fruit setting! Once established, the plants should bear for the next few seasons.

Strawberry runners in pots

Earlier this month, I blogged about trying a new strawberry-growing technique. This new (for me) method involved potting this summer’s strawberry runners.

Strong “mother” plant setting runners

I got the idea when I found a really vigorous volunteer in the garden that was producing gigantic berries. Not only that, but after bearing, this plant began sending out very sturdy runners, which were taking root nearby.  

Before I knew it, this plant had gifted me with at least eight new baby strawberry plants. A great start for next spring, they should eventually fill this bed. But eight plants is definitely not enough for a decent crop.

Then I noticed this strong “mother” plant was continuing to pump out additional runners, besides the ones that had already taken root. I had a brainwave: I could plant these new runner ends in pots, and let the roots develop in the pots. Once the roots of each plant were established, I could cut the runner, and replant the new plant in a fresh bed!

That’s exactly what I’ve done. Last week, I filled lots of little pots with garden soil and a little well-composted chicken manure for some organic matter. I then set a runner end into each pot.

In the photo, you’ll see little rocks in the pots. Long ago, John came up with the idea to weigh the runner end down with a small stone, so the runner has contact with the soil from the get-go, and that works even better.

Now producing crowns for another bed!

I do have one marginal strawberry bed—its best years are done, but the plants have sent out a few fairly good runners. So I started six more runner pots going in this bed, and today, I’ll check out a bunch of strawberry volunteers in my bee balm. If there are any runners worth potting, I’ll start some new plants there as well.

My plan for these pots: I’ll let the plants’ roots grow for the next month and a half, into early fall. Then, before the first frost in October, I’ll transplant the new crowns into a bed to winter over, top dressed with lots of compost and mulch. By spring (fingers-crossed) the new plants will be ready to start growing in earnest.

Instead of mourning a summer without strawberries in 2023, I’m now full of hope for a crop, and eager to see how well these home-grown crowns bear fruit!

Raising Strawberries—a New Breakthrough!

Speed-raising strawberries, see below!

Ever since we started our homestead garden, strawberries have been one of our main crops. And for years and years, I followed all the best practices for planting and cultivating: 

*Planted healthy, bare-root nursery starts in fertile soil

*Pinched off the first-year flowers for vibrant root-growth, 

*Watered and fertilized them regularly, and as growers recommend,

*Clipped the plants down to encourage new growth at the crown.

Plus I added one additional element into my berry-raising: I really put my heart into my strawberry babies!

Now keep in mind that strawberry plants aren’t like blueberry shrubs. They generally produce a good berry crop for about 3-5 years, while blueberries will bear for many decades. Before our own blueberry shrubs started to bear reliably, my husband John and I used to visit a blueberry U-pick that had 7-foot tall, 50-year old shrubs!

Now, any of you growing strawberries, you know about the 3-5 year issue—the virus that develops in cultivated strawberries. It’s not a condition you can fight with sprays or powders; it’s just one of those inevitably things that causes the plants to lose vigor.

In a few short years, a strawberry plant will go from producing large, plump, flavorful berries to tiny, seedy ones. However, the last few years here on our little homestead, I was running into a problem: my new strawberry plants were going downhill within 2 years.

I was getting frustrated—what was up with these plants? My best guess is that our cool, very rainy climate somehow encourages the virus. Still, who knows.

So I decided to mix things up—and raise my own starts! Here’s my post from two years ago detailing the process of speed-raising a strawberry crop. 

Last summer, when the plants matured, I had what looked like an amazing crop. Then along came…

The Bear. 

He broke into our fences, knocked up the strawberry nets, then tore up the plants—and gobbled every berry, white or red, within reach. I ended up stripping these vibrant new plants of every berry, so the bear wouldn’t smell the ripening fruit.

And be motivated to invade our yard for a 3rd time.

What was interesting was that all these plants I’d stripped of berries produced long, vigorous runners! It’s my guess that because they hadn’t put energy into producing fruit, the plants had extra growing oomph.

And instead of clipping them, as is recommended, I decided to just let the runners root, and start new plants all on their own. 

Well. It was the best decision I ever made!

For this year’s strawberry season, my expectations were low. After the bear stole our berries, I kind of lost my emotional investment in raising strawberries. I went with my previous homesteady mantra when I had a crop failure: “Que sera, sera.”

What will be, will be. So here’s what happened this summer. My original strawberry plants weren’t that productive. But the runners I’d let root produced large, healthy plants, and large, high-quality berries! 

The largest berries were from the runners I let grow wild!

We didn’t have a huge crop this year, but we did have nearly 4 weeks of a nice bowl of strawberries for our breakfast. 

And here’s what’s funny.

I hadn’t fertilized the runner-set plants, I only occasionally weeded around them—and basically left them to their own devices. So that’s my new strategy:

I’ll set the strawberry runners, water them, and pick whatever berries come along next year. And be happy with what I get!

As for our neighborhood bear this year, you can see what he’s been up to at Little Farm Writer, always free to read!

Vertical Tomatoes and Other New Gardening Techniques

This summer, John and I are aiming to kick our efficiency and productivity up a notch in our food garden. He first saw vertical tomato growing on Pinterest this past winter, and we were both intrigued. 

Most tomatoes require staking of some kind. You might use commercial cages, or build some kind of support for each plant. All the years we’ve been raising tomatoes, John had created quite an elaborate structure for every plant with poles/small tree boughs going every which way, tying the poles and boughs together with string. Then tying the tomato plant to the structure as it grew. 

It works great, but efficient it is not! Tomato structure building and maintenance has been one of the more time-consuming chores in our food garden. Plus, when you keep all the side growth, you’ve got a large portion of the plant close to the ground. 

First of all, you end up with lots of tomatoes sitting on the soil. Second, all that growth near the ground encourages blight.

Vertical tomato structure

Vertical tomatoes have proved to be a vast improvement! You cut off the low and side growth, and train the plant upward. 

According to Brett L. Markam, author of “Mini-Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre,” this vertical growth has what he calls a “3-D” effect on the plant: it can then grow in 3 dimensions, with increased access to sunlight and nutrients. 

It’s also very labor saving, compared to our previous structures. Once you’ve got your vertical pole and string in place, you just nip the side growth every once in a while and you’re good to go.

Another new-to-us method: raising onion sets. 

I’m not trying this on purpose—it’s more an unhappy accident: the onion seedlings I planted back in April were thriving…I’d kept them well-watered and mulched. Then in mid-July, I weeded them thoroughly. All good, right? But my fatal error: I didn’t water the bed immediately afterward.

Then we had a heat wave.

Well, those poor onions went straight downhill. I think I’d disturbed the roots too much—for onions you’re growing from seedlings, the roots are still really delicate even months after planting. Yesterday, I saw the tops of many onions were dying back—there was no chance for the bulbs to grow to a harvestable size.

So I decided to make lemonade out of lemons! I’ve harvested a few of the dead-top onions, which have very small bulbs. I’ll store them in a cool, well-ventilated spot, and plant them in early spring. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Strawberries…well, our crop this year was minuscule. The strawberries in the bed right under a solar panel didn’t like rainwater pouring down on them all winter and just gave up the ghost. The other 3 beds simply weren’t that productive—but I didn’t realize that until harvesting this June.

We should have replaced those beds back in early spring—August is definitely not the right time to put in new strawberry crowns for next year.

In our climate, you plant new strawberry crowns around March, for a June harvest the following year.  Since we dropped the ball this past spring (urgent family matters took us away from our place), we’ll be out of luck next June.

But wait! I (think) I’ve found an easy solution. One strawberry volunteer from the dead strawberry bed took up residence in the bed next to it and absolutely thrived. Then I noticed the plant put out lots of really strong runners this summer!

Those runners have rooted, creating new crowns! Here’s a pic of what will be my 2023 strawberries.

Plant in center sent out several strong runners

And happily, we’ve got strawberry volunteer plants all over the yard. Like I said, it’s not practical to try and transplant them. But, you can check for runners, clear a little spot for them to take root. Or, set the end of the runner in a pot of mixed soil and compost, and keep it watered. 

One of my chores today will be to locate more runners on my existing strawberry plants, and get those ends in pots. I’ll share a photo once they get going!

Nursery Starts vs Seeds

My husband John and I raise most of our food from seed, but at the start of the growing season, for “insurance,” we treat ourselves to a few store-bought organic nursery starts.

This particularly chilly spring, when even the weeds are behind schedule, we figure the spinach and onion starts will give our garden a little headwind.

A few days ago, we had a warmish, sunny day—but the forecast called for rain and chilly temps the next few days. The spinach starts looked good—yet I knew they wouldn’t be happy in their four-inch pots for long.

I had some home-grown onion sets to get into the ground too, and sowing peas had been on my radar big-time.

So getting the first of the veggie beds planted needed to happen.

I planted the spinach starts first. I can always buy onions year round, but homegrown baby spinach is one of my favorite spring delicacies. Once the starts were tucked in, I sowed two rows of seed in the rest of the bed. 

It’s interesting that with direct seeding spinach, your plants are actually much more resilient. Often, after a few weeks, the direct seed spinach development will overtake the nursery starts and kind of leave them in the dust!

Anyway, after planting the bed it didn’t seem like a whole lot of spinach, so I decided to plant a second bed.

That is, after I got the onions in the ground! This spring, I’m conducting a little experiment.

Usually we plant organic onion nursery seedlings (raising onion from seed is a challenge I haven’t taken on yet). And I did have a couple of pots of the small, slivery starts.

But late last summer, my onion crop had been a bust. The bulbs didn’t really grow: their average size was about half the size of my thumb. I couldn’t figure out what went wrong…until I cleared out the bed at the end of the summer.

I discovered there was an extensive network of roots in the bed just below the surface.

Well. I figured out the culprit immediately: the B-I-G patch of crocosmia growing about a foot away from this bed. Since the bees and hummingbirds love this tall, vivid red-orange perennial flower, I wasn’t about to get rid of it.

I yarded out the roots sort of resignedly, sure they’d be back full bore next year. Lesson: don’t try growing root veggies in a bed filled with other roots. Maybe shallow-rooted peas.

But…looking at my disappointing harvest, I decided: silver lining!

I could save these shrunken little onion specimens over the winter, to plant the following spring as “sets.”

So on this planting day, I cleared the winter mulch off the raised bed I’d chosen. Next, I did my usual gentle spade-forking: it opens up the soil a bit after the winter rains, creating looser soil for root crops.

After lightly raking the soil level, I planted the sets, though I won’t know if they’ll take until I see green sprouts.

I’m also doing a second experiment this season.

Last summer, I could see my next strawberry crop would be sad. My four beds hadn’t produced many berries; the plants were mostly worn out. They would probably product next to nothing this spring.

But I had one big volunteer that was shooting out runners like crazy!

Usually, I’ll buy nursery strawberry crowns—those are the itty bitty beginnings of a strawberry start. I plant them in March, but the berries won’t be ready to harvest until the following summer. If you ask me, that’s a really long time to wait for a crop!

So I had set the little rooting ends of the runners in pots, to allow the roots to get established. Then last November, I cut the runners from the “mother plant” and transplanted the runners in new beds. 

Here’s the link to my blog post.

Strawberry crown starting spring growth!

Now, about four weeks before I can expect to see some blossoms (future berries), the new plants are looking very robust.

I’ll let you know if this “skip-a-year” experiment bears fruit—pun intended!

That evening, after all my planting, I had a wonderful little epiphany.

One year ago, at spring planting time, I had this strange indecision about where to plant what vegetable—crop rotation being one of the best ways to avoid pests and disease in your annual vegetable crops.

I had already created a garden map so help me figure out my rotations. Yet I was still paralyzed by doubt.

Where to plant it all? What if I pick the wrong spots? Which bed to put the potatoes and carrots, tomatoes and cukes; onion and garlic, beets and zukes…on and on it went. While nothing got in the ground!

I’ve read that it’s human nature to get overwhelmed when we are presented by too many choices—like when you’re in front of the toothpaste aisle at the supermarket, and there’s dozens upon dozens products and brands (and re-brands) to choose from.

Result: you just can’t figure out what to buy!

Anyway, that spring a year ago, my hemming and hawing was so bad my planting schedule was delayed by two or three weeks. Which at planting time is a lot.

I suppose my hesitancy stemmed from the challenging year John and I had experienced—more than the usual health and family concerns, with lots of extra decisions to make about finances, the future, and life in general.

On top of it all, we’d just lost three hens to wildlife in quick succession. And I wasn’t sure what to do about the other two girls, who weren’t doing very well—I think they had PTSD from all the bobcat incursions.

And my strange indecision seemed to culminate with my sorry veggie beds: too many choices to make.

That evening, though, after my productive day, I pulled out my map, studying it once again. Suddenly, I said to myself: Just. Do. It!

Really, what’s the worst that could happen? Not deciding, I was risking some crummy results with my food production. Besides, it’s not rocket science!

So after comparing each bed’s succession of plant families, I simply chose a crop from another plant family that hadn’t been in the bed for two or three years. 

I swiftly assigned each veggie crop to each bed on the map and called it good (as my husband John would say).

Garden rotations for 2023!

Whatever issues or setbacks crop up in the garden this year—and there will be plenty, that’s Mother Nature’s specialty—my indecision won’t be one of them!

Bear vs Strawberries & International Fairy Day

Bear just outside our fence

International Fairy Day, June 24, was exactly the day I expected to be in the peak of strawberry season.

Last summer, all our strawberry beds were on their last legs…but there was one vigorous plant that was shooting out runners like crazy. Hoping to create home-grown berry crowns, I set the runners into pots—and ended up with a couple of dozen!

Last fall, I transplanted the crowns, and ended up with four new strawberry beds, filled with robust plants. And as this month rolled around, I anticipated a veritable berry feast.

Then along came the scourge of our summer: a bear.

This young black bear has snuck through our fences numerous times, hitting all four berry beds. The first time, it tore into the earliest-fruiting bed that I had netted early, ate all the ripe ones, whomping one plant right out of the ground, and mangling the fencing around the bed.

It hit the other three beds, swiping at barely-pink strawberries. While John and I double-fenced and re-netted the one seriously invaded bed, the other, larger beds would be far more difficult to protect.

Well, I could see the writing on the wall.

With a heavy heart, I cut all the berry clusters from the plants in those three beds. The bear has trampled all over our garden, so I didn’t want to risk further damage--and I was sure it would attack my strawberries again.

A couple of days ago, the bear tried to get back into that now double-reinforced bed—but didn’t get any berries. Instead, it mangled the outer fence, and gotten the netting seriously awry.

Viewing the limited damage, I breathed a sigh of relief. Which only lasted until I heard a distressed, “Cheep, cheep.”

“There’s a bird in the net,” John said, low.

I looked on the other side of the bed and there was a female towhee, entwined in the net. Towhees are cheeky birds, and have often gone where other, wiser birds have feared to tread: they’ll try to get into even heavily-netted berry beds.

This bird had managed to worm its way through the disarrayed netting, and actually ate two of the biggest, reddest berries. As soon as we came over, it had tried to escape, and gotten tangled up in the nets.

John is our bird rescuer around here, and he gently lifted up the bird in the net, and tried to extricate it, as its cheep, cheeps intensified.

I ran to get the garden scissors, and though it took him about ten minutes, he was able to cut the little bird out. He set it carefully on the ground, then this plucky little girl crawled over to a protected spot among some stones, tucked herself up in a little roll, and just sat there. Barely breathing by the looks of it.

The next day, John and I found the bird a little ways from its hidey-hole, dead. I imagine it died from a combination of a broken wing, and shock.

 With this casualty of a little innocent bird, this young bear has been even more destructive than simply wreaking havoc in the garden.

Our nearest neighbors are having their share of problems from the bear too—earlier this week, it destroyed their bird feeder. Like, killed the feeder. We four are having a confab this weekend to see if we can figure out a solution.

The marionberries will be ready soon, and then the blueberries—without more preventative measures, I shudder to think of what the bear could do to all our fruit and infrastructure! 

On a happier note: Happy International Fairy Day! The day is loosely connected to the June 23 tradition of St. John’s Eve, the celebration of midsummer, celebrated in many Scandinavian countries and Ireland too.

Now, if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’m big on fairies—especially Irish fairies—and International Fairy Day always lightens my heart. If you have a whimsical side too, and haven’t completely discounted the idea that there may be more mysteries in nature than we will ever understand, maybe you’ll be celebrating fairies tomorrow too!

The fairies in our house!

A quick note: I’ve been posting weekly here at the Little Farm in the Foothills blog the last couple of years, with only a few misses—and one of them was last week. This bear has increased out workload in so many ways, and this summer, John and I have to re-do as well as rebuild a number of sections of our fencing all over the property.

We've already started redoing our north orchard fencing--a portion of destroyed fence that another, bigger bear did getting to our apple trees last year.

And trying to keep up with the rest of our garden is going to be a challenge! I’m still planning to post here each week, generally Thursday or Friday, if I can. But if I'm not able to post weekly, I'll aim to share my Little Farm news every other week. 

There’s lots more about our bear invasion in my June newsletter—it’s free, and you don't have to subscribe to read it! I’ll be sharing this continuing bear saga in the next monthly newsletter, out July 10.

Maybe tomorrow, on International Fairy Day, I can fit in communing with our Little Farm fairies for a little positive energy. Which I think I'll need, to keep dealing with our bear invader! 

Zombie Garlic and Other Spring Surprises!

In my homestead-style gardening class at the local community college, we talk a lot about resilient plantings for your food garden. Garlic is at the top of the list!

Garlic that will not die!

A couple of years ago, one April day, my husband John stuck some shriveled garlic cloves into a neglected bed. I’m sure the soil had very little fertility—rife with weeds, the bed hadn’t had any compost on it for two or three years. 

Predictably, the garlic didn’t get very tall and the heads didn’t develop. We wrote it off as an experiment and moved on. 

At one point, I wanted to use the bed for something else. To smother the garlic I first laid a sheet of steel roofing over it, and after pulling up the sheet, set a layer of thick cardboard over the bed.

This garlic, you understand, was completely covered up for months on end.

Catching up on garden tasks this week after a freeze, I discovered the garlic is happily sprouting! The sprouts aren’t at all sturdy, and I’m sure the roots won’t really develop proper heads. But who knows…I’ve only got 4 garlic heads from last summer left in the pantry, so I just might use the undersized roots of this never-say-die garlic to flavor soups and stews!

Meanwhile, over in my real garlic bed, they’re going great guns. A dozen or so shoots got hung up in their winter mulch, so I poked around, found the tops, and freed them from the mulch. These shoots had gotten a bit yellowed, but they greened up in two days.

Yesterday, I had my eye on a blackberry crown in a flowerbed, whose canes were over six feet long. I got out my spade fork to make short work of it—and saw some tiny green shoots among the black-eyed Susans. I poked a bit at them too, and low and behold—they were daffodils that I thought had been choked out years ago!

The round leaves on the right are the invasive black-eyed Susans

Black-eyed Susans, you understand, develop below ground into a super tough mat of roots and runners. And oh my goodness, this bed was wall-to-wall with them. What seems miraculous that these little daffodils had actually survived, enough to keep sending up shoots.

I got to work and pulled out the tough little black-eyed Susan crowns surrounding the daffodils. Once exposed, my daffodilly shoots were somewhat yellow too, but it’s amazing how resilient daffodils can be—like the garlic, these little shoots greened up in no time flat.

My hands, dealing with the wiry black-eyed Susan roots, are the worse for wear… but I have hopes the daffodils will gain enough strength to flower—if not this spring, then next!

True, you can’t eat daffodils—but their flowers are one of the first springtime plants to provide food for pollinators. 

One unwelcome discovery this week: I learned why you don’t transplant small plants in the middle of winter. Two words: soil heaving. 

This past November, we got a hard freeze just after Halloween—so I couldn’t transplant my home-grown strawberry starts into a bed until way too late. Still, I figured the starts would be fine, since I’d put several inches of mulch around the crowns. 

Interestingly, they made it through the worst of winter weather, including multiple Northeasters, and every time we got a melt, I could see they were pretty darn healthy looking. 

But then, each time it got really cold, the beds were covered with snow. Which we all know is the best winter insulation gardeners can find! 

But wait… Two weeks ago, we had yet another Northeaster—temps in the teens—and no snow. I could see from the house the strawberry plants had lost color—and looked peaked. And when it warmed up and I got a closer view, I saw to my dismay that this last thaw had heaved the strawberry plants’ root balls right out of the ground. 

I got busy right away and replanted the crowns, and added even more mulch. Fortunately, like daffodils and garlic, strawberries are resilient. Nearly every crown has already sent up a very hopeful little leaf, unfurling more each day. I’ll plan to report on their progress!

There’s the first tiny leaf, right in the center of the crown!

What Spring surprises are you finding in your garden?