I don’t know what that song is about, but I do know that I have been so excited and grateful to my little strawberry plants this year. What was I thinking with a 7×7 bed?? I certainly wasn’t thinking that my kids would get so excited about eating strawberries out of the garden. Or how sweet it would be when B suggests we make strawberry jam, everytime I bring in a handful of berries. Or that N would wander out there and hunker down to poke his little fingers in through the bird netting to try to pull berries out on his own. *sniff*
Anyway, I bought 2 varieties, ’Honeyloe’ a June-bearing, and ‘Fern’ an ever-bearing. After the impressive show of continuous berry production from ‘Fern’ I was ready to rip the Honeyloes out and let Fern’s daughter plants take over. But then I read today that June-bearing put all their fruit out at once, which is great for the aforementioned jam production. Hmmm…so now I guess I’ll need to extend the berry patch out for next year. I’m dreading sorting out the plants though. I didn’t do 2 things you’re ’supposed’ to do with strawberries…I didn’t pinch back the first round of blooms. Just couldn’t do it. And I didn’t cut the runners. I kinda just forgot with that one, but also, just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So now I’m left with this tangled mess of runners and weeds all over the place, and I’m not really sure where to go from here. I may have to call in reinforcements and have my mom help me sort it out.
And the middle of the thicket has become the lair of 2 very large, very scary looking garden spiders. I should research them to make sure they’re not some horrible venomous variety, but I hate looking at spider pictures. Maybe I’ll get Scott to look them up. That’ll teach him.
