New this year, we have three raised beds behind the house! I should really devote this post to their set up as a background for all future gardening posts, but I’m way too excited about my strawberries so…. I’m going to write about my strawberries. Strawberries with some Star Wars references as titles, because I can.

Episode IV: A Berry New Hope

Last year’s single temporary raised bed was my first real year gardening. The beginning, if you will. I planted three everbearing strawberry starters, with the aim of getting a steady stream of delicious rather than just a June harvest.

As I googled “growing strawberries” at the cash register – a strategy I continue to use for most of my gardening endeavours – I read that strawberry plants generally aren’t super productive in their first year. Nonetheless, they produced just enough delicious berries for me to be very excited about their increased future output.

Episode V: The Strawberries Strike Back

Year Two had a completely different start. We built new, permanent beds with greenhouse caps to keep in warmth. Last year’s plants overwintered like champions, and were transplanted into the sunniest bed, alongside four new starters for this year.

They’ve been forced to share their lodgings with my cherry tomatoes, given the prime sunny real estate.

Oh my god, they are doing great! My first plant from last year has been dubbed Big Mama, and has massive berries! They just started ripening over the last few days and I am so impatient. I’ve had some tiny teaser berries ripen on the smaller plants and oh man, they are good. One had some itty bitty slugs on it, so I’m planning on some defensive action (TIE fighter squad?! Pyew pyew!) to save the delicious.

Teaser for Episode VI: Return of the Garden Candy

Not only am I already getting ripe berries mid-May (thank you greenhouse warmth), I’m getting overrun with runners. They’re everywhere. With the aim of directing energy output to fruit production and the most promising runners, I’ve culled the strawbabies to a maximum of three per plant.

Since the beds are filled up nicely this year, I’m going to pot all the runners for the summer season. A couple are already taking root! The next step is deciding whether I should replace the tomatoes with them in the fall and have one full strawberry bed next year, or keep some greenhouse space for the tomatoes and start a second strawberry patch elsewhere.

Too many strawberry plants is a great problem to have! Such a hard life!