Hello again,
Good gardening friend Paul Parent of the Paul Parent Garden Club sends out a great newsletter every week with pertinent gardening topics. I encourage you to go to his website to sign up for his newsletter. Paul can also be heard every Sunday morning from 6 AM to 10 AM at his website or at WBACH (104.7 FM) every Sunday morning from 6 AM to 9 AM. Paul recently sent this article out called "Growing Strawberries" (I occasionally add a few comments in italics) and here it is:
"If you're looking to grow the most luscious of all the berries that can be grown in your backyard garden, look no further than the strawberry. When ripe and freshly picked from your garden, there is no better tasting berry for its sweet flavor than this easy to grow plant--the strawberry. Like any other fruit or berry, the picking season is short, so be sure to save room in your freezer for those cold days of winter when you crave a sweet treat.
Strawberries will grow best in full sun in an area that is sheltered from harsh winds. The plants will still grow if they are in partial shade for a few hours but the production of fruit will be less. Avoid planting in low spots in your yard, like the bottom of a hill, to prevent frost pocket problems early in the season. One other tip--do not plant in the same area where you recently grew potatoes or tomatoes in the last 3 years; it will work against you.
Strawberries are not picky about the soil they grow in, as long as it is well drained. Wet soil during the spring can and will rot the roots of the plants. Wet spots that freeze during the winter, forming ice, will kill the plants over the winter. Soil preparation is the key to great strawberries. If you prepare the planting bed ahead of time, you will save a lot of problems later. Add plenty of organic matter like peat moss, composted or dehydrated animal manure, or rich compost (I am not a fan of peat moss--not well draining--and dehydrated manure is hard to find. Composted manure and/or Coast of Maine Quoddy Blend is a great way to go) to the garden and blend it 6 to10 inches deep. If your soil is heavy with clay, add coarse sharp sand, like what is used to build the base of a brick walkway. I much prefer gypsum to break up sharp clay instead of coarse sand! Paul goes on to mention gypsum....
I also suggest using a product like garden gypsum to help break up clay soils and apply garden lime to the soil as needed to keep the soil almost neutral--a pH of 6 to 6.5 is best. Remember the plants will be there for 3 to 4 years, so do it right the first time. Another tip for you is to plant strawberries in a raised bed. All you have to do is dig out the soil from the walkways 2 to 3 inches deep and add to the planting bed. If you get a lot of rain in the spring, the extra water will have someplace to go and not hurt the roots of the plant.
Strawberries can be planted two ways in the garden: as staggered rows that are allowed to fill in the entire planting bed or as evenly spaced plants to be grown as individual plants. Staggered rows that fill in the planting bed will give you more fruit, but in time the berries will get smaller because of competition with other plants. Plants grown on individual mounds will have much larger fruit but fewer berries. Each average strawberry plant should produce one half to one pound of berries per plant for the three years they are in your garden. I like a staggered row concept but one that allows you to grow rows by year. In other words keep all the plants or runners from one year together!
Spacing is 15 to 18 inches in between plants, 3 to 4 plants wide per planting bed; this will make it easier to harvest berries later. When you plant your strawberries, be sure to set plants in the ground at the same depth in the garden that they originally grew in the pot. Look for a green ring around the short stem of the plant and just barely cover it with soil. Spread the roots out in the garden soil to help them develop more easily, and make sure the leaves are not covered with soil.
I also like to spread straw on the ground around the plants to help choke out weeds, prevent slugs and snail problems and--best of all--keep the berries off the ground and clear of the soil. Place the straw around the plants and be sure to lift all foliage and berries off the soil; this will give you better air circulation and help prevent berry rot. Use barley or wheat straw--NEVER hay--and weeds will never be a problem.
New plants should be watered regularly until established, and during hot and dry growing periods. When the berries are ripening, keep water off them to prevent gray mold and other disease--water the soil, not the fruit. The best time to water is in the morning, so excess moisture can evaporate quickly off the berries with the morning sunshine. NEVER water strawberries late in the day or at night or you will have moldy berries.
Fertilize in the early spring as the foliage begins to develop and the flowers form. Use organic fertilizers,, as they feed slowly and last longer in the soil. Mycorrhizae added to the planting beds will produce stronger and more productive plants. If your soils are sandy be sure to add a pinch of Soil Moist Granules to the planting hole when you set the plants in the garden.
Your biggest problem will be BIRDS because they, like you, love strawberries. Just cover the berry plants with plastic netting at the first sign of the berries ripening and make sure the netting is raised above the plants so the birds cannot poke through the holes in the netting. Pick early in the day and pick often to keep them from eating your berries. In wet weather slugs can be a major problem but much less so if you use all natural Slug Magic to keep the slugs at bay!
One last thing: strawberries come as June-bearing plants or ever-bearing plants. June-bearing plants produce all at once, usually in 3 to 4 weeks, while ever-bearing plants produce for a much longer period of 6 to 8 weeks. Both produce about the same amount of berries overall; it depends on how fast you want them for your table. Enjoy! Enjoy!
Thanks to Paul Parent!
Mike Skillin
Skillin's Greenhouses
April 25, 2011
Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts
Monday, April 25, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
April Garden Talks: Seed Potatoes and Strawberries
Hello again,
Years ago before we could spell "b l o g" we published some tips on growing seed potatoes and strawberries in the garden. The time is now to plant seed potatoes as well as strawberries in the garden. Here are the updated highlights from our original 2001 Garden Talks about this subject:
"I have borrowed from Jim Crockett of Crockett’s Victory Garden to bring you excerpts of some material from his fine book, Crockett’s Victory Garden:
Potatoes like full sun and a light, sandy soil. They also want an acid soil, as alkalinity will promote the development of a skin disease called scab. So I’ve made a point of keeping the potato area free of lime. If your garden has been limed and you still want to grow potatoes, add sulfur at the rate of ½ pound over the surface of a 15 foot row to lower the pH of the soil to between 4.5 and 5.5, which is just right for potatoes.
At Skillin’s we sell certified seed potatoes by the pound.
I could just plant the whole potato, but I can get more for my money, and a larger yield, by cutting the potato into section about the size of an egg, making sure each section has two or three eyes. I plant each of these sections separately, and each will produce a strong potato plant.
Before the sections go into the ground I dip them in sulfur or captan (fungicides) to prevent rotting of the cut surfaces. Then I leave them exposed to the sunshine and air for 3 to 4 days. This dries out the cut surfaces as a further precaution against rotting when the sections hit the cold, damp soil of early spring.
I dig flat-bottomed trench 6 to8 inches wide and 4 to 5 inches deep. Then I sprinkle in 3 good handfuls of 5-10-10, an excellent potato fertilizer (I recommend using Pro Gro 5-3-4 by North Country Organics or Garden Tone by Espoma), in a 15- foot row and scratch it into the soil so it won’t be in direct contact with the potato sections. I put the potato sections in, cut sides down about a foot apart in the trench and cover them with about three inches of soil. As the plants grow, I’ll pull soil in from the trench to keep the plants cool, a procedure known as hilling or mounding.
Mr. Crockett ( a fraternity brother by the way of David and Jeff Skillin of Alpha Tau Gamma at U Mass Amherst) also offers the following advice about strawberries:
Strawberries grown in the home garden are usually sweeter and richer than any that can be bought in stores.
I set my June-bearing strawberry plants into the ground as early in the spring as possible so that they could become will rooted before the warm weather. I prepared the soil the previous fall by covering it with a layer of 2 inches of cow manure and 4 inches of compost. In the spring I dug both these materials into the soil. It wasn’t necessary to add more lime because a soil test indicated a pH of 5.7, the slightly acid condition ideal for growing strawberries.
Strawberries multiply by sending out runners, or aboveground stems, from the main plants. At approximately every 12 inches along the runners a new plant grows and sets down roots into the soil. For this reason I plant strawberries in what’s known as a matted-row system: the plants grow throughout a 3-foot –wide row.
Strawberry plants have long roots and they need to be planted carefully into a deep slitlike hole. If planted too deeply, the crown is likely to smother and rot; if set too high, the crown will dry out and the plant will die. The idea is to set the plants in the slit so that one-half of the crown is buried below grade, one-half above. I make the hole with the flat-bladed spade, which I insert 8 inches deep at 2-foot intervals along the row. As I slip the plants in, I fan the roots out slightly to separate them and give them a better chance to grow. Then I firm them in and give them a good drink of our transplanting elixir, water and liquid fertilizer (we absolutely recommend Fish and Seaweed Fertilizer by Neptune's Harvest).
June-bearing strawberry plants are undoubtedly the most familiar variety of strawberry, but they are not the only variety, and they’re not, in my opinion, even the best. Ever-bearing, or Alpine, strawberry plants are substantially different from their June-bearing counterparts: for one thing as the name implies, they produce fruit all season long, from the spring through to the first frost; for another, they do not produce runners and so remain as tidy handsome plants throughout their lives; finally, their tartly sweet fruit is beautifully shaped and a rich, deep red.
It’s best to replace strawberry beds every two or three years, because the plants and the soil nutrients will have become too exhausted to produce good crops."
Mike Skillin
Skillin's Greenhouses
April 23, 2010
Years ago before we could spell "b l o g" we published some tips on growing seed potatoes and strawberries in the garden. The time is now to plant seed potatoes as well as strawberries in the garden. Here are the updated highlights from our original 2001 Garden Talks about this subject:
"I have borrowed from Jim Crockett of Crockett’s Victory Garden to bring you excerpts of some material from his fine book, Crockett’s Victory Garden:
Potatoes like full sun and a light, sandy soil. They also want an acid soil, as alkalinity will promote the development of a skin disease called scab. So I’ve made a point of keeping the potato area free of lime. If your garden has been limed and you still want to grow potatoes, add sulfur at the rate of ½ pound over the surface of a 15 foot row to lower the pH of the soil to between 4.5 and 5.5, which is just right for potatoes.
At Skillin’s we sell certified seed potatoes by the pound.
I could just plant the whole potato, but I can get more for my money, and a larger yield, by cutting the potato into section about the size of an egg, making sure each section has two or three eyes. I plant each of these sections separately, and each will produce a strong potato plant.
Before the sections go into the ground I dip them in sulfur or captan (fungicides) to prevent rotting of the cut surfaces. Then I leave them exposed to the sunshine and air for 3 to 4 days. This dries out the cut surfaces as a further precaution against rotting when the sections hit the cold, damp soil of early spring.
I dig flat-bottomed trench 6 to8 inches wide and 4 to 5 inches deep. Then I sprinkle in 3 good handfuls of 5-10-10, an excellent potato fertilizer (I recommend using Pro Gro 5-3-4 by North Country Organics or Garden Tone by Espoma), in a 15- foot row and scratch it into the soil so it won’t be in direct contact with the potato sections. I put the potato sections in, cut sides down about a foot apart in the trench and cover them with about three inches of soil. As the plants grow, I’ll pull soil in from the trench to keep the plants cool, a procedure known as hilling or mounding.
Mr. Crockett ( a fraternity brother by the way of David and Jeff Skillin of Alpha Tau Gamma at U Mass Amherst) also offers the following advice about strawberries:
Strawberries grown in the home garden are usually sweeter and richer than any that can be bought in stores.
I set my June-bearing strawberry plants into the ground as early in the spring as possible so that they could become will rooted before the warm weather. I prepared the soil the previous fall by covering it with a layer of 2 inches of cow manure and 4 inches of compost. In the spring I dug both these materials into the soil. It wasn’t necessary to add more lime because a soil test indicated a pH of 5.7, the slightly acid condition ideal for growing strawberries.
Strawberries multiply by sending out runners, or aboveground stems, from the main plants. At approximately every 12 inches along the runners a new plant grows and sets down roots into the soil. For this reason I plant strawberries in what’s known as a matted-row system: the plants grow throughout a 3-foot –wide row.
Strawberry plants have long roots and they need to be planted carefully into a deep slitlike hole. If planted too deeply, the crown is likely to smother and rot; if set too high, the crown will dry out and the plant will die. The idea is to set the plants in the slit so that one-half of the crown is buried below grade, one-half above. I make the hole with the flat-bladed spade, which I insert 8 inches deep at 2-foot intervals along the row. As I slip the plants in, I fan the roots out slightly to separate them and give them a better chance to grow. Then I firm them in and give them a good drink of our transplanting elixir, water and liquid fertilizer (we absolutely recommend Fish and Seaweed Fertilizer by Neptune's Harvest).
June-bearing strawberry plants are undoubtedly the most familiar variety of strawberry, but they are not the only variety, and they’re not, in my opinion, even the best. Ever-bearing, or Alpine, strawberry plants are substantially different from their June-bearing counterparts: for one thing as the name implies, they produce fruit all season long, from the spring through to the first frost; for another, they do not produce runners and so remain as tidy handsome plants throughout their lives; finally, their tartly sweet fruit is beautifully shaped and a rich, deep red.
It’s best to replace strawberry beds every two or three years, because the plants and the soil nutrients will have become too exhausted to produce good crops."
Mike Skillin
Skillin's Greenhouses
April 23, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Preparing Your Blueberries and Strawberries for Winter
Good gardening friend Paul Parent of the Paul Parent Garden Club (http://www.paulparent.com/) sends out a great newsletter every week with pertinent gardening topics. I encourage you to go to his website to sign up for his newsletter. Paul can also be heard every Sunday morning from 6 AM to 10 AM at his website or at WBACH (104.7 FM) every Sunday morning from 6 AM to 9 AM. Paul recently sent this article out called "Preparing Your Blueberries and Raspberries for Winter" (I occasionally add a few comments in italics) and here it is:
"It's time to put the berry garden to bed for the season, a time to collect our thoughts of what we did to these plants and what they produced for us. Last week I drove by a "Pick your Own Strawberries" field and noticed that they were covering the berry beds with two inches of straw. I pulled in to the berry fields and talked to the workers, to find out that the fall is the best time to prepare the bed for the year.
Applying fresh straw in the fall helps to protect the berry plants from cold and snowless winter winds, as snow acts as a blanket of insulation to protect the plants. Straw, not HAY, is used to keep weeds out of the strawberry bed during the year; it helps warm the soil in the early spring to wake up the plants and get them growing. Straw also keeps the berries clean, as they are off the ground and slugs are less of a problem. When the workers finished, they were planning to apply limestone to the entire growing area to help keep the soil on the neutral side--remember neutral soils have less weeds growing in them. (I would only apply the limestone to the strawberries--not the blueberries. I know this is Paul's intent!)
(I think too we have a little time to get the straw down around the strawberries. Too early in the month will provide a great deal of time for mice and other rodents to use this straw as a winter home and your plants for food. So if you can wait on this project and other straw mulching projects until later in the month).
In the spring, the strawberry plants will poke through the straw and begin to grow on top of the fall layer of straw, which also helps with air movement around the plant to help prevent possible rotting of the berries and speed up ripening. In the spring, just add a bit of fertilizer and the plant is ready to produce. Use a fertilizer like Garden Tone by Espoma first thing in the spring and again in early summer, after picking the berries, to help the new developing plants for next year's crop. All you will have to do now is keep the birds out of the garden and enjoy the berries. (We sell some great garden netting at Skillin's that you can put down in early June to keep the birds away!)
In the blueberry garden, it is time to clean all the fallen leaves from around the plant and add them to the compost pile. When the garden is clean, add a two-inch thick layer of pine needles, straw, salt marsh hay, or pine bark mulch around the plants and in between the rows of plants. This layer of organic matter will insulate the roots of the plant during the winter, keep them cooler during the hot days of summer and control weeds in the garden.
I like to fertilize these plants spring and fall with Holly-Tone by Espoma fertilizer, and I add aluminum sulfate in the spring and fall to help keep the acidity level high in the soil. Aluminum sulfate will lower the pH of the soil, helping plants achieve their goal of high crop production. Also use it on blue hydrangea spring and fall to keep the flowers blue. (All natural Soil Acidifier Garden Sulfur by Espoma can be subbed for Aluminum Sulfate--I recommend it!)
Once the garden is ready for the winter, I always apply All Season Oil and Copper Sulfate Fungicide to the entire garden. This will help destroy any insect eggs or disease spores left on the plant by insects and disease from this year. I also reapply both of these natural products again in April, so I will have few if any problems with the garden. In the spring, when I notice that the buds are beginning to swell, I apply my fertilizer to help the flower and leaf buds develop properly.
Strawberries are most productive the second and third year in the garden. The first season in the garden is to help establish the plants. At the end of the third, dig up the berry bed and replant for next year. Blueberries are a real long-time crop that will last 25 years or more in your garden. With proper care, the plants will continue to grow, increasing production each and every year. So be sure to condition the soil when planting with compost and animal manure, mulch yearly, feed regularly (with Holly Tone by Espoma) and keep the soil on the acid side.
Most insect and disease problems can be controlled with the application of a general purpose fruit tree spray; follow the recommendations on the package to develop a spray program for your garden. The flavor of fresh-picked berries is far better than store-bought--and so is the nutritional level in the berries. Enjoy! "
Mike Skillin for Paul Parent
November 2, 2010
"It's time to put the berry garden to bed for the season, a time to collect our thoughts of what we did to these plants and what they produced for us. Last week I drove by a "Pick your Own Strawberries" field and noticed that they were covering the berry beds with two inches of straw. I pulled in to the berry fields and talked to the workers, to find out that the fall is the best time to prepare the bed for the year.
Applying fresh straw in the fall helps to protect the berry plants from cold and snowless winter winds, as snow acts as a blanket of insulation to protect the plants. Straw, not HAY, is used to keep weeds out of the strawberry bed during the year; it helps warm the soil in the early spring to wake up the plants and get them growing. Straw also keeps the berries clean, as they are off the ground and slugs are less of a problem. When the workers finished, they were planning to apply limestone to the entire growing area to help keep the soil on the neutral side--remember neutral soils have less weeds growing in them. (I would only apply the limestone to the strawberries--not the blueberries. I know this is Paul's intent!)
(I think too we have a little time to get the straw down around the strawberries. Too early in the month will provide a great deal of time for mice and other rodents to use this straw as a winter home and your plants for food. So if you can wait on this project and other straw mulching projects until later in the month).
In the spring, the strawberry plants will poke through the straw and begin to grow on top of the fall layer of straw, which also helps with air movement around the plant to help prevent possible rotting of the berries and speed up ripening. In the spring, just add a bit of fertilizer and the plant is ready to produce. Use a fertilizer like Garden Tone by Espoma first thing in the spring and again in early summer, after picking the berries, to help the new developing plants for next year's crop. All you will have to do now is keep the birds out of the garden and enjoy the berries. (We sell some great garden netting at Skillin's that you can put down in early June to keep the birds away!)
In the blueberry garden, it is time to clean all the fallen leaves from around the plant and add them to the compost pile. When the garden is clean, add a two-inch thick layer of pine needles, straw, salt marsh hay, or pine bark mulch around the plants and in between the rows of plants. This layer of organic matter will insulate the roots of the plant during the winter, keep them cooler during the hot days of summer and control weeds in the garden.
I like to fertilize these plants spring and fall with Holly-Tone by Espoma fertilizer, and I add aluminum sulfate in the spring and fall to help keep the acidity level high in the soil. Aluminum sulfate will lower the pH of the soil, helping plants achieve their goal of high crop production. Also use it on blue hydrangea spring and fall to keep the flowers blue. (All natural Soil Acidifier Garden Sulfur by Espoma can be subbed for Aluminum Sulfate--I recommend it!)
Once the garden is ready for the winter, I always apply All Season Oil and Copper Sulfate Fungicide to the entire garden. This will help destroy any insect eggs or disease spores left on the plant by insects and disease from this year. I also reapply both of these natural products again in April, so I will have few if any problems with the garden. In the spring, when I notice that the buds are beginning to swell, I apply my fertilizer to help the flower and leaf buds develop properly.
Strawberries are most productive the second and third year in the garden. The first season in the garden is to help establish the plants. At the end of the third, dig up the berry bed and replant for next year. Blueberries are a real long-time crop that will last 25 years or more in your garden. With proper care, the plants will continue to grow, increasing production each and every year. So be sure to condition the soil when planting with compost and animal manure, mulch yearly, feed regularly (with Holly Tone by Espoma) and keep the soil on the acid side.
Most insect and disease problems can be controlled with the application of a general purpose fruit tree spray; follow the recommendations on the package to develop a spray program for your garden. The flavor of fresh-picked berries is far better than store-bought--and so is the nutritional level in the berries. Enjoy! "
Mike Skillin for Paul Parent
November 2, 2010
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