When it comes to strawberries, there's nothing like fresh-picked. The commercial ones may be gigantic in size, but most of the ones I've eaten don't come close to the garden-grown ones in the taste category.
Eighteen years ago when we moved to my grandparents' farm, we inherited a strawberry patch along with raspberry bushes and grapes. For the first few years, we picked gallons of strawberries and made a lot of jam. However, as the years passed, quack grass began taking over the patch and the amount of berries diminished. We tried, unsuccessfully, to rid the patch of the quack grass and, when that didn't work, we dug up the strawberry crowns and transplanted them into another part of the garden.
Unfortunately, we picked the wrong year to transplant. Soon after we moved the plants, the weather turned dry. We watered the strawberries, but not enough, because they died. At that point, we decided to give up on having a patch. We were busy raising children and didn't have the time to fuss with strawberries.
For the next several years, we had to buy berries. They were OK for baking, but most of them weren't flavorful enough to eat fresh or make into jam. I missed the garden berries and a couple of years ago, when friends from our church told us they were downsizing their patch and wanted to know if we would like some crowns, Brian and I jumped at the chance. By this time, we had three more good strawberry eaters in our family and the children also were old enough to help weed the patch and to pick berries.
We planned to transplant the strawberries in fall 2010, but heavy rains saturated our garden and we decided, instead, to transplant them in the spring. In May 2011, sons Brendan and Thomas, and daughter, Ellen, went to our friends' house and filled boxes with the crowns. We soaked the crowns when we got home, and Brian planted them.
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Prolific patch
Dry conditions weren't a problem with this batch. It rained all summer and fall, and the strawberries flourished, sending out runners every which way. By the time the weather turned cold and the strawberry plants dormant, we had an excellent-looking stand that promised to produce a bountiful crop in 2012.
And bountiful it is. Every few days, we get down on our hands and knees and pick buckets of strawberries. We have five wide rows, so we divide up with some of our family members on one side and some on the other. We've found that dividing the rows in half helps reduce the amount of berries we squish, which, in turn, means fewer stains on the knees of our jeans.
During the past two weeks, we've picked a couple of dozen ice cream pails of scrumptious, juicy berries that are as sweet as candy. We've eaten them in strawberry-rhubarb sauce, with angel food cake and fresh-picked. We made 25 pints of strawberry jam, have given them to friends and brought them to work to share with co-workers -- and we still have more berries to pick.
Not that I'm complaining. The strawberries are delicious, and I've savored the taste of every one I've popped in my mouth. They're grown organically and are pretty much dirt-free, so I've eaten plenty right off the vine. That's a taste that no gargantuan store-bought berry can beat.
Reach Bailey at (701) 787-6753; (800) 477-6572, ext. 753; or send email to abailey@gfherald.com .
