Every morning at about 6:50, before he's found his shoes, Mateo opens the screen door and checks the strawberries. He crouches on the porch steps in his socks, lifts the leaves in each of the six grow bags and reports back with the seriousness of a TV weatherman. On a good day he comes in with three or four berries in his palm. On a great day he forgets to save any.
The setup
This is our first year growing strawberries. In early April I bought a bundle of 25 bare-root June-bearing plants and three more fabric grow bags to go with the three I already had, $42 for all of it. One crown came out of the bundle brittle and black, so it went into the compost, and the other 24 went into the bags, four to a bag.
The bags sit on the wooden porch steps, lined up along one side so there's still room to walk up the middle. Why the steps? They get the same late-morning-to-sunset light as the rest of our southwest porch, they're up off the ground and away from the worst of the soil splash, and we walk past them ten times a day. I don't forget to water something I have to step around.
I filled them with Pro-Mix cut with about a third compost. Feeding has been one top-dressing of compost in May and nothing else.
What I did wrong (probably)
Most growing guides say to pinch off the flowers on June-bearing strawberries in their first year, so the plants put their energy into roots and give a much bigger crop the following June. I read that advice, understood it and ignored it. I had a ten-year-old who'd been promised strawberries.
So we got a small first crop. Next June should be better whether I pinched or not, but I'll never know how much better. That's a trade I made on purpose.
The harvest so far
About four pounds, picked over roughly two and a half weeks starting the first week of June. Most days it was a handful. The best day was 11 ounces. The kitchen scale and the notebook say 4 pounds 1 ounce as of this morning, and the plants are almost finished, with just a few hard green berries left.
At the $4.99 a pound I wrote down at Stop & Shop, that's about $20 worth of strawberries from $42 of plants and bags that should keep producing for a few years. Not a lot. But a grocery store strawberry has never been warm from the sun, and ours are small and dark red all the way through.
A ripe one hanging over the rim of a bag looks like a lit coal against the dark fabric. That's always the one Mateo spots first.
We made two shortcakes. The first was for Father's Day on Sunday, on biscuits Nate burned slightly on the bottom and insisted were fine (they were fine). The second was last night, with the last real bowlful, and it was smaller and somehow better.
Who else wanted them
Deer cross our front yard most nights, and in April they ate all thirty tulips along the front walk in one go. I fully expected them to climb the steps for the berries. So far they haven't, maybe because the bags are right by the door and the porch light, or maybe they just haven't noticed. I'm not counting on that luck lasting.
A squirrel did find them. I lost about a dozen berries, each with one bite taken out and then left on the step, which feels personal. A few slugs made the climb up the steps to the lowest bags, which I'd honestly admire if they weren't eating my fruit. I pick off whatever I find in the evening and drop it in a jar.
After the last berries, the plants will start sending out runners. I'll pin a few into gaps in the bags and cut the rest, and in late fall the six bags will get pushed together against the house wall and mulched with shredded leaves for winter.
Next year: pinch the flowers on any new plants, and let these 24 do what they've been practicing.
