Strawberries

Strawberries are on, and are they ever delicious! Strawberries are the first harvest crop for our small farm. I really like the idea of progressive or succession crops, so if you don't have strawberries, I encourage you to consider them. We planted two years ago, and spread wood chips all over the beds. This has been a blessing in that weed control has not been a big problem for us in the bed. The negative has been nitrogen in the soil. Even though the wood chips were not tilled in, we have areas of the bed where the berry plants are smaller, and the leaves are slightly yellow. Adding nitrogen to the bed seems to help green them up. Overall, I encourage wood chips for berry mulch.

We and some friends picked around 150 lbs in one day this week. Our bed area started as three distinct rows, but over the years it is one contiguous mass of berry plants. While we have no wasted space for rows, it would be easier to pick the center of the bed if there were paths.

As far as other crops: Our garlic is looking good but the scapes have not yet developed. The raspberries are in heavy bloom, so it will not be too long for these to be ready for harvest. Our three varieties of potatoes have beautiful leaves and tall stalks, and are just getting ready to flower. Some of the tomatoes are flowering, and a few of the peppers are flowering. The orca is growing, but slowly till it gets hotter.

Watermelon, cantaloupe and bean plants are still small, but they seem to be growing well to this point. We have a succession planting of corn to get in the ground, and a few more rows in the main garden to plant. It has rained every week or so, which has been nice, and mostly eliminated the need for irrigation so far this year.