Strawberries for the Soul

Emerging Strawberries-Bird Back 40

And you thought Chicken soup was the only good thing for the soul? Guess again. Strawberries -- especially home grown berries -- are pretty darn good for the soul as well. I should know -- since fresh berry patches grace the Bird Back 40 -- providing us with a bounty of fresh berries from mid-spring through June.

Why plant strawberries? The most obvious answer is "why not?" Strawberries are a wonderful addition to any backyard -- and you can grow a lot of berry with a small bit of room. In this particular case? A raised bed holding fruit trees is also doing double-duty as a strawberry patch. As it turns out -- fruit trees and strawberries work quite well with one another.

Strawberry Plants in the Apple Patch

This is a tip that the wife that is Venus and I learned one adventurous Saturday afternoon during a class taught by Folsom City Arborist Ken Menzer. A lot of great ideas came out of that class -- some of which worked and others (blueberries) did not. But his advice to plant strawberries at the base of fruit tree plantings was spot on. Leaves of these trees help shelter tender berry plants from blazing afternoon sunshine, while the berries open up cracks in the soil allowing water and other nutrients to reach fruit tree roots.

The pairing just works. Another advantage to this tandem is strawberry plants choke out all weeds. I haven't been required to weed the berry bed for years.

Emerging Strawberries in the Pear Patch

It's done just fine for the apple trees we planted four years ago in a side yard of the Bird Back 40. This apple "patch" as I call it also holds the tastiest apple on the planet -- bar none: The Honeycrisp. The raised bed that the trees are planted in is dotted with a collection of Albion and Chandler strawberry plants.

Although they look productive -- this was yet another gardening mistake on my part. If you Google the terms of "popular strawberries to plant in California," up jumps a number of lists of strawberry plant recommendations. At the top of those lists? The number one plant for California gardens? The recommendation is the "Albion" strawberry.

Shuksan Strawberries

And so -- four years ago -- Bill Bird sat at his computer as he is now -- and made yet another gardening blunder. I ordered a set of ten Albion plants and ten Chandler plants from Sakuma Brothers Farms in Washington. Why was this an error on my part? Because I jumped before reading the fine print. As it turns out -- Albion is a GREAT strawberry for California -- but only for certain areas. Albion berries grow and produce best in gardening zones 3-8. The Bird Back 40 is located in Zone 9A.

Bummers. No wonder the strawberry plants weren't as productive as I hoped. Although they've set a nice crop here in Year 4 -- at some point I will pull them out and replace them with a strawberry plant that loves Zone 9A. There are plenty of varieties that do quite well in the Sacramento area. I just have to choose the right one.

Shuksan Strawberry Plant (bare root)

For this year's berry planting effort? I decided to read the fine print on the Sakuma Brothers website. In other words -- I found the berry for our backyard. It's called the Shuksan Strawberry -- and the bundle of 20 plants that arrived in the mail earlier this week have been planted here and there in the raised bed holding three pear trees.

Shuksan strawberries grow best in Zones 4-10 -- and are often found at those roadside strawberry stands that dot the Sacramento countryside during fresh strawberry season. They are good for fresh eating. They are good for jams and jellies. They are good for just about everything.

The Shuksan plants will grow through the spring and summer, sending out shoots and will take over every last inch of space in the raised bed holding our pear patch. Combine that with other strawberry patches dotting the Bird Back 40 -- and that's a lot of pie.

This is a bad thing?

I think not!

The Bag Man!

Marquitos and Celina Show Off the Flower Pouch

Bill Bird is the bag man -- and so is nephew Marquitos -- pictured here with his flower bag creation. It's rare when the new dog teaches an old dog some new tricks -- but that's exactly what happened this past weekend in the Bird Back 40.

I suppose a (short) explanation is needed.

I had never considered using bags to grow flowers or produce before until I spotted a photo of a bag in use some years ago while thumbing through one of the gazillions of gardening magazines we have strewn about the house (these things never get tossed -- they just get shoved into unused corners). This particular bag was covered with ripe strawberries -- and the particular advertisement was aimed at growers who had limited space.

I don't necessarily have limited space (though I am filling it up fast) -- but the thought of growing strawberries or flowers along the fence line did intrigue me.

Gaviota Strawberry Crowns

I have a lot of fence. My drip irrigation lines are already bolted to the fence. Possibilities abound.

Although the creators of the "Topsy Turvey" tomato creation offer a similar creation (strawberry grow bags) -- I wasn't about to blow $5 to $10 for just one bag. Bill Bird isn't just frugal. He's CHEAP! Ask the wife that is Venus -- and the rather ingenious plan to stick her diamond wedding ring in a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken (she didn't find it until she had consumed the mashed potatoes. Hey, priorities are priorities!).

Secondly -- I didn't want to plant the kind of strawberries that you find at your local nursery. Those are fine I suppose -- but I wanted something special. I wanted the varieties that you see in those one or two acre strawberry farms strewn across the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. Know what I'm talking about? They are the plants that yield big, fat, juicy, lip-smacking strawberries that fresh fruit lovers dream about over the winter months.

Lip-Smacking Albion Strawberries

There's just one problem: Those varieties are "protected." Specifically developed by UC Davis, cultivars with legendary names like Chandler, Albion and Gaviota are NOT easy to find. The growers who maintain those one or two acre strawberry farms will be happy to sell you a flat of strawberries. But they stop short at selling a plant. I should know -- I tried -- and I failed -- MISERABLY.

Help would come in the form of a co-worker by the name of Nghia (Nee-Ah) Demovic (I call her DemoNvic because she takes great pleasure in making me look like a fool). Born in Saigon before the fall of Vietnam, Nghia immigrated to the United States when she was still a child. Despite the challenges that these children faced, Nghia easily transitioned from Eastern to Western Culture and is one of the top communications professionals working in California's State Capitol today.

But she also still has a firm command of the Vietnamese language -- which I put to good use. She could talk to the Vietnamese and Hmong farmers in ways that I could not. And -- in the space of an hour -- she managed to find what I could not discover over the space of six months: a source for the UC Cultivars.

Albion Strawberry Crowns Planted Beneath Apple Trees

I was like a kid at Christmas as I browsed through the Sakuma Brothers Strawberry Farm website. There they were -- the UC cultivars I had been looking for. And -- at a price of $5 or $6 for ten crowns (plants)? The price was right down Bill Bird's Alley of Cheapness. I couldn't order them fast enough.

As for the grow bags? Google is your friend. Once I started googling the terms of "grow bags" and "strawberries" and weeding through multiple advertisements for the Topsy Turvey strawberry bag and its inflated price -- I spotted something familiar. It was the bag that I had spotted in that gardening magazine years earlier.

The bag in question is called Original Al's Flower Pouch. And -- at a price of a buck a bag -- it was well within my price range. There are many outlets for the Flower Pouch, and some sellers will attempt to charge you more than a buck a bag, but keep looking. That's the nice thing about free market competition. Someone is always going to undercut the other guy.

Original Al's Flower Pouch-10 slots

Original Al's Flower Pouch contains anywhere from five, six or ten different slits or holes. These are very small. The first problem I would run into is, how do I fit that fat bundle of flower roots through that tiny hole? Should I fill the bag with dirt first and then plant? Or should I find a way to shove the plants into those tiny openings first -- then fill it with dirt?

The bag could not tell me. It was just a bag. Bags don't talk. And the bag did not come with instructions.

My first inclination was to rip the root ball of the petunia starter plants I'd purchased into two different pieces. But that wasn't easy. I nearly destroyed the first plant I tried this "trick" with. As a matter of fact, it's still trying to recover.

Petunia Starter Plants

It would take the advice of a seven-year old nephew to crack this nut. "Why not squeeze them," he asked in an innocent voice. I initially waved him off with a "no, that won't work" type of adult response when I discovered, to my horror, that he had already squeezed one root ball into the shape of a popsicle. I watched this boy -- in wonder -- as he slid that starter plant effortlessly inside that small hole. The base of the plant anchored itself to the outside of the bag, and the root ball, once inside, expanded to the point where it could not slip back out.

The kid is a genius.

In no time at all -- the kid who had all the answers managed to fill up all ten slots -- fill the flower pouch with dirt and hang it against a fence.

More Strawberries!

Venus and I would repeat the same kind of trick the next day with Albion Strawberry crowns. This was a bit trickier as we had to fill the bag half full with dirt first -- before planting the crowns -- then praying that they wouldn't fall out as we turned the bag up after planting and proceeded to fill it to the top with additional planter mix..

The crowns didn't move.

And so my good gardening friends -- there you have it. Bill & Venus Bird have graduated to "bag man" and "bag lady" status. There are eight more flower pouches to fill. What should we try next?

We are taking suggestions!

Peaches N' Berries for Breakfast? Yes Please!

There's nothing like fresh fruit in the summertime -- especially when that freshness comes straight from the backyard. Our gardening -- tending and fertilization efforts are starting to pay off now with some impressive strawberry harvests from a berry patch that started from one, single, solitary strawberry plant.

One is apparently all you need...Because -- as I was soon to discover -- one plant turns into many if provided with the right soil and right conditions. The strawberries featured to your right started from just one plant -- purchased at Capitol Nursery two seasons ago.

We didn't have our raised strawberry bed created just yet -- so I planted it in the corner of a tomato bed -- and there it grew -- expanded -- and sent out "runners" for other berry plants in the same bed. By the time next spring rolled around? One plant had turned into about 20.

I was rather alarmed. How did all those plants get there? Did someone plant other strawberries while I wasn't watching? It was time to move them to a new home.

That "new home" is a two foot wide and six foot long, nine inch raised bed located against a back fence on the east end of the Bird Back 40. I thought this would be more than enough room -- but our little "strawberry patch" soon gobbled up the extra space and began to "demand more." I have to hack this thing back regularly.

I should be handing out strawberry plants to unsuspecting friends and neighbors instead.

I'm not even sure of what this variety is -- except that it is an ever-bearing plant -- which means it produces all summer long. The berries that you see in the photo above? That was just the start of the harvest. I didn't realize it -- but I'd skipped quite a few ripened berries during the first harvest.

I also noticed ten to 12 developing strawberries right next to every strawberry that I harvested today. This tells me that our season is just now starting to get underway. I think we'll be harvesting berries for quite some time.

Please forgive the blurry photo to your right. My hand was shaking (with obvious excitement!). Our strawberry patch has never yielded quite this much before -- and what I like to call the "Hand of Venus" is playing dividends.

I told you this lady has a green thumb.

Venus had been battling an invasion of slugs in the strawberry patch earlier this spring. Although she battled back with cat food cans filled with cheap beer (slugs love beer) -- she couldn't fill them up fast enough -- or a spring rainstorm diluted things so much that the "beer barrier" was rendered inneffective.

She's recently turned to the organic practice of spreading egg shells in the strawberry patch -- a new one for me. Believe it or not -- it appears to be working wonders. There was a time when three out of five strawberries would show some kind of slug damage.

But since Venus started spreading eggshells? No damage whatsoever. I didn't find a single -- slug-spoiled strawberry during my hunting and gathering efforts this morning. Don't ask me how this works. I have no clue. But Bill Bird is a big fan of egg shells in the strawberry patch

And boy did I find some berries!

Combine those strawberries with some ripened June Pride peaches? You've got yourself one nice, sweet garden treat for breakfast. Although the June Pride peaches are disappointingly small this season -- they're still pretty darn good.

I'm not sure why the peach harvest is somewhat smaller this year. It might be the result of our cold spring. Or it just might be the year for smaller peaches. I'm not familiar enough yet with the June Pride variety to tell yet. This variety normally doesn't yield large, grapefruit sized peaches. But it's not supposed to yield plum-sized peaches either.

This year -- for some reason -- it is.

The neighborhood birds -- our "feathered friends" as we call them -- don't seem to mind much to our chagrin.

Stupid birds! Just when we need our hunter-killer cats for fruit protection efforts -- they suddenly choose to go on a diet. "No birds for us," they claim. "How bout refilling that cat food dish son?"

So -- what's new? This is the first year -- our third in our new and expansive North Natomas backyard -- that we've been able to actually combine fruit harvests. The strawberries were not ripening at the same time as the June Pride peaches last year -- probably due to the fact that they had just been transplanted into a new home.

But this year? We have strawberries. We have an eye-popping number of strawberries. I have a feeling that these harvest numbers will only continue to multiply exponentially in the coming years.