The Price of Fresh Strawberries

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An expert is nothing but a damned fool a long way from home.

-Carl Sandburg

"June-bearers generally produce more runners (and more berries) than everbearers and day-neutrals, which grow best in hills, pyramid planters, barrels, hanging baskets, etc. It is important to set June bearers 18 to 24" apart in a row or raised bed, leaving about three feet between rows. The runners that form from the mother plants will form a matted row. Ideally, you will get about five runner plants per square foot of matted row. Chop off late runners after you attain this density and remove all the runners that have not rooted by the first of September. If all goes well, you'll have a whopping crop of big juicy strawberries from the June-bearers:'

But not, I regret to say, until the following year. It's worth the wait. Meantime, you have the smaller berries of the everbearers and day-neutrals, which can be harvested through the first growing season.

Defending these tender little kids is my specialty. There are many, many things that can ruin a strawberry crop: too much sun, too little rain, bugs (including sawflies, root weevils, aphids, spider mites, and nematodes), root rot, fungus infections, or something else entirely. A winter cover crop of rye on the strawberry beds will help reduce black root for some sound scientific reason, no doubt, but do we really care, so long as it works?

Strawberries are prone to leaf scorch and leaf spot, with their characteristic purple spots. These fungal diseases usually appear in the hot and humid months, and can reduce yields by 20 percent. Cut off all the leaves immediately, and you'll stand a good chance of saving the plantings. You can use a lawn mower, set high to take only the leaves. And next time, space those plants far enough apart so the leaves can dry out. The pathogen likes wet leaves.

There are lots of caveats and wherefores about growing strawberries, most of which are fairly simple. It starts to get interesting when I read about companion planting for strawberries and the organic ways to keep the bugs from eating them. Bush beans make good companion crops because of their nitrogen-fixing rhizomes and the fact that bean and strawberry roots grow at different depths. The wise gardener will also plant a sizable border of marigolds around the beds. A marigold perimeter kills off nematodes, those microscopic worms that live in the soil and suck root cells dry, and marigolds also repel other insect pests.

But not, unfortunately slugs. It would be wonderful to kill every slug in creation, but it simply isn't possible because the buggers enter your garden at night while you're asleep. You can set out beer traps, of course, or sandpaper. But for something more permanent, you might try a contiguous perimeter of 1/2," copper pipe around your strawberry beds, connecting the sections with sleeves and elbows; slugs and snails hate to cross copper.

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