Strawberry Redistribution

Last September I planted 3 strawberry plants in my side garden bed. They produced virtually no strawberries but spread like crazy. I’m hoping the lack of fruit is attributable to a lack of sunshine and fertiliser (the plants were abandoned to their own fate when we vanished to Germany for the summer) rather than just being berry-less plants.

This is what those 3 plants had become pre-redistribution:

I dug and ripped and separated and worked like some great deforester to clean out this bed and move the plants into a more appropriate space. Actually it’s a new bed that Frank prepared by framing it up and then covering the grass with compost, horse manure and then newspaper with cardboard on top. After a few weeks, the newspaper and cardboard were moved to the next bed and water crystals plus coffee grounds were added to this one. I’ve forked the whole bed a couple of times to mix up the soil. The grass is pretty much gone (or dying down there) and the soil is really good now.

Here’s the bed being constructed:

Here’s the bed full of strawberries:

After transplanting something like 45 strawberry plants – maybe 1/4 of the crop – I ended up with a bunch leftover. Paul had asked for some when he found out what we were doing so he got a box with a couple dozen and I still had heaps left over so I made up 2 pots full of them.

Even with all my give-aways, quite a few plants ended up in the compost bin which was heartbreaking. Not a bad effort for 3 small plants in 9 months. Let’s hope this year they put that same hard work into producing food rather than more plants.

Now I have to clean up the old strawberry bed. It will be the home of the spinach and celery seedlings I sowed back in May. They should need planting out in a few more weeks which gives me time to put some manure into these beds and let them settle. Of course the first step is to let the chickens do their thing. They spent ages digging and eating in this bed after the strawberry plants were gone.

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