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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Tuesday Garden Party - The Great Strawberry Experiment

The strawberries are coming, the strawberries are coming, the strawberries are coming!  We harvested our first strawberries this week and it is really exciting.  We have watched them bloom and grow for the past few weeks and picking those first new berries was wonderful.
 I planted these last year and diligently did not let them fruit or run.  Do you know how hard that was????  But we are being rewarded with many, many berries on each plant.  I did a bit of an experiment when I planted these.  I planted half the bed with inexpensive non-named plants from Lowe's and the other half with Seascape plants I ordered from the Burpee catalog.  I wanted to see if there really was a difference. Boy is there!  The non-named plants from Lowes have a lot of berries, but they are TINY and not very sweet.  The Seascape plants are full of medium to large size berries that have a delicious flavor.  I am contemplating pulling up the no name plants at the end of the summer and replanting with more Seascape next year.  We will see how things end up at the end of the growing season. 

I hope to have enough strawberries for us to eat through out the summer and make at least one batch of strawberry jam. 

For more garden fun visit the Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage.

6 comments:

  1. I want to grow strawberries, but when I read about it, it sounds so complicated! How do you not let them fruit or run? Pinching off the blooms? Love your results!

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  2. Good information about the results of your strawberry experiment--I will definitely keep that in mind when I go out to buy some strawberry starts! We are not anywhere close to having strawberries to eat yet where we are at--it'll be more like July 4th or so.

    Athena at Minerva's Garden
    http://www.minervasgarden.com

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  3. You are so lucky to have fresh strawberries already. Here in Southern Indiana it's still to cool. Enjoy!

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  4. Hello, stopping by from an Oregon Cottage. Our strawberries have not even bloomed yet. You are so far ahead!

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  5. This is great to know, Jenny! I'm doing a great experiment, too, but on asparagus. :-)

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