Garden: A New Strawberry Patch

One of the very first things to go into our new fruit cage was a batch of strawberry plants.  The variety was Charlotte and considering that the fruit garden was on an area totally devoid of topsoil, nothing but blue or yellow clay and exposed boulders, they cropped pretty well for the first two seasons.  In the third year the harvest was almost non-existent, or the slugs did very well, and never a runner was sent out by the plants.  My plan was to take new plantlets from runners and establish a bed in the real, actual soil of the vegetable garden, but obviously such was not to be. 


Last summer the fruit garden was one of the areas that was entirely abandoned when arthritis limited my activities.  The strawberries were at the end of their lives anyway and the bigger fruit bushes could fend for themselves.  The vegetable plot had to take priority.

So last autumn I spread half a bin of home made compost on the little half-sized bed in the potager (an enormous granite boulder filled the other half of the planned 1.5 X 9m bed and had entirely defeated man and power tools), covered the compost with black plastic and left winter and time to prepare the bed for me.



Sadly, Time has obviously been busy elsewhere this winter, as the compost still looked much as it had in the autumn and the whole area smelled reminiscent of the glass tank containing my pet rats when it needed cleaning out.  And that would explain why the cat spent most sunny days sat on top of the plastic.

On Friday 13th March my fresh new strawberry plants arrived from cold store; we'd liked the Charlotte so much, I'd gone for something different this time, namely Cirafine.  I was sold by the idea of an heirloom variety with a taste similar to Mara des Bois and a rather interesting elongated teardrop shape.  I ordered 25 bare root plants from Baumaux as they had been of excellent quality last time and, again as last time, I had 26 plants to find a home for.

After forking out the mouse, rat, vole and mole tunnels and removing the biggest lumps of uncomposted branch,  I covered the bed in a biodegradable straw-based weed suppressing matting.  I still struggle with spending long on my hands and knees so anything to keep the weeding down (and the moisture in) had to be worth a little extra expenditure.  Five years ago I would not have spent the money on anything that was merely time and labour saving as we had time-a-plenty.  It is remarkable how ill health can change your priorities!

Planting was simply a question of slitting crosses in the voile noire, digging a little hole, spreading out the roots and back filling, remembering to keep the crown above soil level to avoid rotting off in my horrible cold clay. 

Which proved to be a far more difficult task then anticipated: the slit crosses in the voile got bigger as I flailed around with the trowel and the crown of the plant inevitably ended up not centred in the middle of the cross.  Oh well, as they grow up through the holes I can no doubt adjust the cuts.





Once they were all planted I covered the lot over again with some enviromesh: the weather has turned cold again from the shorts and vest of the start of the week back to lying snow by Friday, so they need a little protection.  And protection from the cats who will find the voile much more easy to get their claws through!

Roll on June and the first fruit, although I must be careful and not let the plants over produce this year.