Organic Garden Strawberries

For the 1st time, we planted strawberries today. Dad found a door frame somebody threw out and gave it to us to use for a raised bed. It's surprisingly attractive, even more so than the store bought raised bed frames. Upon review, almost everything on our back patio was acquired for free and it's all rather nice stuff, too.

The recommendation is 25 plants for a family of 4, so we bought 18 plants. The important varieties grown in Alabama, according to Aces.edu, are Chandler, Douglas, Albritton, Sunrise, Cardinal, Earligrow, Earlibelle, Delite, & Allstar. However, these varieties are nowhere to be found at Lowes, so we went with the following:

• 6 Sequoia - June Bearer. In mild climate, this tends to grow like an ever-bearing
• 10 Ozarks - Ever-bearing
• 2 Quinault - Ever-bearing

There are 2 general planting methods for strawberries: the matted row & the hill system.

The matted row system generally produces a larger quantity of smaller strawberries, encourages runners, and is best suited for strawberry varieties that create a lot of runners (usually june-bearing strawberries). This  method works better for home-grown strawberries where hand de-weeding is possible. This system suits itself to growing perennially as the system gets stronger each year (if it doesn't succumb to disease and pests).

The hill system generally produces fewer large strawberries, encourages the mother plant at the detriment of the runners, and is best suited for strawberry varieties that don't create many runners (usually ever-bearing types). This system responds well to a plastic mulch and is frequently used by commercial growers in Alabama who plant in fall and harvest then till under in spring. Strawberries, particularly in Alabama with it's warm and humid summers, are susceptible to disease and pest and thus might do better grown as an annual then as a perennial.

For pest control (from birds), you can paint stones like strawberries long before the berries arrive to train birds there isn't any fruit.

Organic fertilization can be accomplished with blood meal to raise nitrogen and bone meal to raise phosphorus  Applications should be made monthly between June and September.

Expected productivity for a matted row system (makes me wish I'd ordered Day-neutral):

• June-bearing: .5 - 1 lb / ft row during 2nd & 3rd year
• Ever-bearing: .25 - .5 lb / ft row during 2nd & 3rd year
• Day-neutral: .25 - .75 lb / ft row during 1st year & .5 - 1.5 lb / ft row during 2nd & 3rd year

Here's a good article on companion planting borage with strawberries.

Since we have predominantly ever-bearing varieties, we went with the hill system spacing 18" X 4' then inter-planting with a mescalin salad mix. We kept all the blooms clipped to encourage plant growth over fruit growth for the 1st year with the hopes that next year we'll have a better crop. The grassy top layer was tilled under then the remaining raised bed was filled in with 4 ft3 of Organic Miracle Grow Garden Soil and 1 bag of Velvet Magic Mushroom Compost. That filled it up perfectly. Topped it off (as a mulch) with some leaves for additional compost material. Fingers crossed we'll grow some nice, healthy, organic strawberries and baby Simon will get some truly homemade strawberry baby food!

 
5/2014 Update: The plants we purchased in pots all thrived and the ones grown as crowns from a bad almost all died (or maybe ALL of them?). Anyhow, we only bought maybe 8 plants from pot total and after clipping flowers and letting the plant run, then clipping the runners as soon as they showed roots to start a new plant, we ended up with about 100 plants by fall (there were Dixie cup strawberry plants everywhere). During fall, we took all the Dixie cup strawberry plants up to our property, laid down landscape fabric, poked holes in it, and planted all the strawberries. Turns out that landscape fabric (the kind we bought) didn't do a thing to keep weeds at bay. All it did was keep the soil moist to HELP the weeds, but it must have helped the strawberries too b/c they looked great and they made the best strawberry fruit I ever had in my life (this was the first time we'd ever even grown them before). Oddly enough, you can pick a fruit that's soft and it's not bad, it's actually the best when it's soft. You just have to eat it as soon as you pick it, is all (not a problem for me). Anyhow, it was very exciting as we've had a lot of bad luck with almost everything we've planted so far. Our soil is pretty nutrient poor and very very sandy, but the strawberries did really well. They dont' show any signs of disease yet. I'm surprised how many plants it takes to get just a little bit of fruit though. Most of the plants look pretty full of fruit, but at any given point in time they're mostly still green, so you can walk over 100 plants and end up with about 1 lbs of red juicy fruit. So far, we've gotten about 3 lbs total out of our 100 plants. Maybe we did something, but honestly they all look healthy at productive. Granted, I think something or someone else is eating some of our fruit. I did see several picked and bitten off of fruit lying around upon the last harvest.