Strawberries

A few years ago, we got some strawberry starts from a friend. We planted them, tried to harvest from them, kept them alive, and then we moved. We took some of the plants with us to our new yard, and fell into the same habits of keeping them alive, meaning to harvest when they were producing fruit, and didn’t get much. They once again survived, and when we moved a couple of years ago, we transplanted some yet again. We brought less plants with us to the new yard this time, and they nearly died. Early in the fall, I contacted the new homeowner of our previous home and asked if we could go get some plants to transplant again. They said we could have as many as we wanted as they had done well the last year and grown way more than they wanted. We got a lot (and left even more!) and completely filled our designated space with these strawberry plants.

The day after we planted them, it snowed and then continued to stay cold for a few days after that. Crazy to have such cold weather still early in fall, but the day it snowed, I covered the strawberries plants with tarps and when I uncovered them a couple of weeks later, they appeared to be thriving.

Recently, I wanted to be able to protect the fruit from being eaten by birds, so hopefully I can get to collecting the strawberries myself. I collected many small rocks from various areas in our yard (The former homeowner had a deep love for rocks of all sizes everywhere.) and spray painted them red, to look like strawberries. Hopefully it will discourage the birds to eating too many and we can enjoy some. Currently, they are sitting in a bucket waiting for spring when I put them in the strawberry patch.