Saturday, June 25, 2011

More Strawberry Plants

Shortly after I purchased my house, my next door neighbor informed me that the original owners (there were only two other that owned the home before me), had tried growing some strawberry plants on the western side of my home. Now, there is a narrow strip of soil that runs along that side of the house that is dedicated to planting. The soil there isn't all that great (it's a bit sandy), but it's not that bad either, and that strip of soil only gets the afternoon sun (I think it only gets about four hours of sunlight). Furthermore, that strip of soil lines up directly underneath the eaves of my roof, so it doesn't get any water when it rains; thus, the plants growing there must be drought tolerant or require lots of hand-watering.


Well, last spring I chose that spot as one of the first spots to start my outdoor "cleaning." There were lots of dead bermuda grass, weeds, and "stuff" growing all over. Furthermore, the previous owners left behind several tires in that area. During my clean up, I did see several of the strawberry plants and I chose to leave the plants alone. Seriously, I think I only saw at most two to three plants, consisting only of leaves. I opted to just let the plants be. I thought the plants were going to die due to the non-ideal growing conditions in that area and the fact that I was not going to protect the plants from the harsh winter. At the time, I also didn't want to keep the plants. As I posted earlier, I already had other strawberries in mind and I really only wanted to grow one variety of strawberry.


Fast forward to this spring. I finally established my small vegetable garden beds and two of my three remaining raised beds. (I have a total of six raised beds that I built to put into my garden, and last spring I established three raised beds for my two raspberry plants and my one blackberry plant.) I was planting some more drought tolerant plants in that strip of soil on the western side of my home when I saw that the strawberry plants were still alive and had multiplied. Yes, the plants were a bit wimpy looking, but it was also fruiting too. Do you see the little pink and red spots in the above picture, amid all the weeds (and, yes, those are the aforementioned tires)?


Although, I do not know the variety of this strawberry plant, I believe that it is a June-bearing strawberry plant (meaning that it will only provide fruit once during the year, specifically in June and maybe early July) because it propagates by sending out runners. Do you see that little runner (in front of the hand trowel) coming out of the "mother" strawberry plant in the above picture? In digging up the other plants around that area, I noticed theses plants propagated by runner plants. It's my understanding that everbearing strawberry plants (like the Mara des Bois strawberry plants) very rarely send out runners, but June-bearing strawberry plants send out lots of runners.


How could I not give this strawberry plant a proper home? It has survived all of these years and continued to grow and multiply in less than ideal conditions. Plus, those little wee strawberries are too cute, even though I know that they're so small due to not having sufficient sun and soil. So, I dug up the plants and planted them in my last raised bed this morning. Lets see what happens next spring. In addition to next spring, I may have to wait another year to get a sufficient harvest of strawberries. Oh well, I didn't pay anything for the strawberry plants and I think I did right by using what I have around the home, rather than going out and buying more plants.

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