Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good...

The strawberries are ready to go!

The bed has been cleared of dead leaves and old shooters, and fertilizer has been applied - and none too soon; we're seeing the first flowers appear. This year is just warm... everything is popping early this season.

Cleaning the strawberry bed is just *not* my favorite task - and it's a great example of my habit of "85% is good enough" that Amber (justifiably) accuses me of. I will gladly sacrifice 15% of quality if it means a job gets done with haste- particularly if it's something I don't enjoy doing in the first place. So the strawberry bed is ready for the season - or at least it's 'good enough'.

Strawberry Bed Preperation

Finally finished getting the strawberry bed cleaned up and fertilized. Untangling runners is distinctly not a fun task. =P

Last year the strawberries were one of the big success stories of the garden. For a couple of weeks during the beginning of July we could take our a salad size bowl and fill it nearly to the top *every day*. We'd like to see that again this year.

We're not sure exactly what variety we have- but they are an early season variety with nice big fruit. We did have some ever-bearing plants mixed in, but the early season varietal is much more aggressive and has pretty much taken over the entire bed. I've got a project in mind in the future where I'll create an additional strawberry bed... when that happens, I'll go for mid/late season plants so we can have a longer harvest season.

I found a great write-up called STRAWBERRIES IN THE HOME GARDEN published by NC State. Included in it is a month-by-month guide to strawberry care that is really fantastic. I'll probably reference this in the future.... in hindsight we should have thinned the plants back in September and fertilized well before now. Oh well. Pretty much between now and September we just need to make sure this plot stays well watered.