Farm to Field: Fresh Strawberries!!

There's not much better than dark ruby red, fresh off the plant, ripe strawberries! It would be a toss-up between strawberries and one of my mommy's steaming hot-off-the-griddle homemade waffles with fresh homemade maple syrup! I just don't think there is much in this world that could taste better! And even though we've had unpredictable weather, which may be the only predictable thing about Indiana weather, with unusually late frosts and many chilly, rainy days most of the last month, our strawberries are ripening!

I don't think there has been a May/June that I can remember where we have not had fresh strawberries, although they weren't always homegrown. I remember as a little girl, sitting on the stool with water running down my elbows, stemming what seemed like sink full after sink full of strawberries. In the last ten or so years we have grown our own, and experimented with quite a variety of growing methods and a few different varieties of berries. Our favorite kinds that we grow now are Early Glow and Fort Laramie.

When we first started growing strawberries in Indiana, we just put the plants in the ground, like people normally plant strawberries. They did alright, but one year they began to rot with so much water and clay in the soil. Plus it was difficult to weed them because the runners had made a carpet over the whole patch. Strawberries need to be tilled under after a couple years anyway, so we replanted and tried putting black paper and mulch around all the berry plants. That worked well for a year or two, but the paper and mulch disintegrated, the weeds grew back, and we once again had a strawberry carpet that was getting tricky and uncomfortable to pick in without squishing berries or plants.

Our next experiment was raised beds! I don't know the exact dimensions of the first bed, but maybe 3'x6'x6". My dad built them with untreated wood, so that nothing would leak into the soil. We mixed all the soil, which I don't remember the mix exactly either. I know there were several bags of peat moss and mushroom soil, along with other a few other soils and vermiculite. They did work, but still weren't ideal. The soil drained quickly and we struggled to keep them watered well enough. Plus it wasn't much easier to pick the berries while squatting next to the bed, since we did not want to walk in it.

My dad then built three-tiered beds, and he also rigged up a watering system. We filled them up with the dirt from our compost pile. So far they have worked quite well! There have been very few weeds, and the ones that are there are easy to pull. The plants have thrived and picking has been much easier as well! After a year we decided that two tiered beds might be easier to pick from still, so my brother built some. The plants haven't had much time to grow, so we won't get many berries from those beds yet, but next year we may have a better idea of how well those work!