Friday, April 10, 2015

Spring strawberry clean up

I am not very experienced gardener, especially in growing strawberry.

I am growing everbering and june berring types and I do not have much sun in the garden, which may be the reason I do not have big harvest.



The first type of berries I got was Ozark beauty - and the plants  and 3 years old now.


You can see the plant inself is pretty healthy after the winter. I was covering them with oak leaves.
It was a lit of snow this winter and some of plants did not survive - I see the growing point is rotting and 3-4 plants so I have to remove them.




Last year I planted 3 more bareroot  types - 1. Honeoye
That's how the bed was look like after the winter - plants covered with wood shaving and leaves.

I did not see berries last (the first) summer.

I was also surprised that some of the plants roots are out of the soil.
I checked the plants, removed the old mulch, added compost to the roots and new mulch - wood shaving again.
 The bed after the clean-up.
 Two other types are Tristar and Tribute, everbering types - they were very productive last year.


My experiment was of growing them on the black mulch. I like this idea, no weeds, but I lost 5 plants this winter. The plants were pulled out of the ground and frozen.

The Tristar plants after cleaning.






My absolutely love is alpine strawberry - last year I added to my collection -

Golden Alexandria.
Small plants, with green-yellow leaves and everbering berries with very strong smell!
Not so much but as a treat!

 There is one of the bed under my red currant bushes.

This one is a wild strawberry that was brought from NH forest and overwintered here.

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