Strawberries!

I can’t pick strawberries without remembering my first gardening mentor. Rita was a friend of my mom’s who loved the land and gardened organically over forty years ago. I brought my toddler with me to glean her patch and bribed him to sit in the grass by occasionally throwing a strawberry into his lap. 

Rita taught me that strawberries were suicidal. She used wide planks to pick from and moved them every fall in order to smother a different strip, thus allowing 20% of her patch to lie fallow and controlling the strawberry plants’

tendency to overproduce offspring. It was a great method.

Unfortunately, I have no access to what has become very expensive wooden boards. I heed her admonitions by ruthless late summer pulling and composting of old mother plants, leaving room for new growth. I also do fall applications of compost, making small piles randomly, which also smothers about 10% of the plants. It seems crazy gardening, but I harvest over a dozen gallons of the juicy berries from my little urban patch.

I wash, hull and freeze most of the crop. When I get sick and tired of the hulling, I freeze them with the stems to later steam juice for jelly. I eat them on my oatmeal every morning and make preserves of the rest. I always run out before the next crop.