Saturday, June 25, 2011

June 25, 2011

If it's June in the Pacific Northwest, it must be the start of strawberry season. For a month or so I've watched the flowers bloom and the plants grow strong and healthy.  I've also seen berries form and plump up.  Having grown up with the tiny berry plants, it's good to see that I've got slightly larger varieties.  I have no idea what variety I've got, but June bearing comes to mind. Anyway,  I'm just thrilled to get a harvest this year.  If you recall last year my young boys harvested all the berries one morning before we got up, ripe or otherwise. 

So, you can imagine our thrill to see berries ripening all over my berry bed.


This year, the boys have been sternly warned not to pick any berries without mom or dad around.  So on Logan's last day of school, as a treat we went picking.  Anything that was fully ripe and in danger of being eaten by slugs or birds was harvested.  We got a very good harvest and left several more fairly ripe berries in the garden.


As you can tell the boys had a blast!


I think he looks happier than his brother, don't you?


Over the last few weeks or so, we've been working through a Costco flat of strawberries. In my experience, they've been tough and relatively flavorless.  These babies on the other hand, melted like butter on a hot day when I was cutting the stems off.  The girls didn't seem to have an opinion on which they liked better, Costco's or mine. They devour the tops in one gulp.  We on the other hand, were in heaven eating those perfectly sweet and tart juicy red pouches of goodness.  Makes my mouth water just writing about them. Tomorrow we'll have to harvest more!  And to think we've got close to 100 berries left on the plants in various stages of growth!  That, and the plants continue to send out runners that I train to go where I want. MUAHAHAHAHAHA!  Soon will be blueberry season! Yum!

Now you see why I won't let my girls free range.  Rather they get a new patch of 32 SF of grass every day to forage in.  Not a perfect world, but a nice arranngement over all.

Enjoy your garden!

7 comments:

  1. Your strawberries look wonderful! I hope to add a strawberry bed some time in the future.

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  2. Yum. I so wish I had strawberries. But this is their first year. I can let my everbearers go now and one has a blossom on it. I'm expecting to eat it in not that long. I'll have to get the bird netting out though. The birds in the neighborhood are vicious.

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  3. Good for you, man...those strawberries look delicious..

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  4. Yum! I love strawberries. Our patch is going to be a relatively low producer this year because it is a newly planted bed and a rabbit was mowing it down earlier this spring. It is bouncing back (pardon the pun) from the bunny invasion but will not be a big producer for those two reasons. However, I have some in pots that should provide a few handfuls soon. The raspberry, blueberries, and huckleberries though ... not that is another story! They are all loaded with fruit that should begin with the raspberries for harvest in the not too distant future.

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  5. Thanks all! This is what I'd planned all along to have a strawberry ground cover. They're filling in nicely after only a few years. Gotta love edible ground cover.

    Kitsap, sorry to hear that your bunny invasion was so damaging. That's why my girls are tractored. I too can't wait for blueberry and blackberry season. I've got no room for raspberries.

    EG, yes, they were the best strawberries I've tasted.

    Daphne, I'm so lucky that I haven't lost much to birds despite the active populations. I'm prepared to net but haven't had to, thankfully.

    Grafix, I love them as ground cover, just direct the runners where you want them. Not hard at all! Hope you get some soon!

    Thanks all, love the comments! Keep 'em commin'!

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  6. Wow, that is a wonderful haul! They look delicious!

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