Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Strawberries and Love Divine

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Photo courtesy of Leonard Moorehead

The strawberry rules the June garden. Does the glossy red, heart shaped berry deserve admiration? Do robust quantities of antioxidants and phytonutrients attract health conscious organic gardeners? The strawberry is ranked # 4 in pound for pound nutritional value among all foods consumed in the United States. The lovely red strawberry is an outstanding choice for gardeners of every stripe. Strawberries have claimed a medicinal and culinary role for millennia. Perhaps just as long, the strawberry has touched the heart. Surely, no gardener cultivates a berry with more appeal. Do love, health and reliable results attract you? Look no further, the beautiful strawberry is much more than the sum of its parts.

Strawberries are native to temperate woodlands around the world. Their leaves, roots, and berries are jam packed with goodness accessible to all of us. It wasn’t always so, among Europeans strawberries were noted by classical writers and medieval illuminists as a medicinal plant foraged from the wild. King Charles V of France, known to enjoy the wild berry in royal forests brought 1200 plants into the royal gardens in 1464. Wild strawberries are small piquant berries briefly in season and packed with explosions of flavor. Their woodlands habitat is a clue for gardeners; we duplicate natural growing conditions as much as possible. Royal patronage and plenty of hand labor kept strawberries a regal luxury. Cardinal Woolsey served Henry VIII strawberries and cream in 1538.

Forever linked in love, strawberries were embroidered on Desdemona’s handkerchief, as Shakespeare tells us. Othello’s discovery of love’s symbol fed his fatal jealousy. Our craving for true love hasn’t diminished across time or distance. English colonists in Massachusetts found indigenous peoples mixing tiny dried strawberries into corn meal. Strawberries leapt out of the garden’s margins and into popular cultivation when large berry examples cultivated among Andean peoples in Chile were sent to France in 1714 and accidentally cross bred with those grown nearby in the royal gardens. Larger berries, good flavor and nutritional value moved the berry from kings to peasants.

I can’t imagine a garden without the strawberry. No matter what size or site, the strawberry deserves the gardener’s attention. With typical yields of 21 tons per acre routinely reported in the USA, this berry’s prolific and nearly carefree cultivation is legendary. Nor does their alluring red color and taste trump entrée into the gardener’s heart. Lucky is the child allowed to harvest berries alongside caring adults. Nor can anyone deny the charming red stained fingers and lips on smiling faces? Kindly folks make allowances, one for the basket and one for the child, two for the child or more. Perfectly ripe for only a couple days, the strawberry is at its top form fresh from the garden. Once picked, they do not ripen further and decline within 48 hours from maximum taste and benefit.

Strawberries are naturally prolific in loamy soils high in organic content. They tolerate light shade, mine abound beneath dwarf Asian pear and apricot trees. Yes, strawberries thrive nearly buried under loose straw or hay. Mine are treated to fresh old hay mulch just before leaves fall in October and again after a winter’s dormancy soon after snow melts when the crowns of the plants show signs of life. Grown in full sunshine is fine although like many urban gardeners I am pressured to cultivate sunny spots for sun lovers such as tomatoes, green beans or as now, an adjacent bed of asparagus. Although know to be susceptible to an array of fungus and mold infections, strawberries are remarkably resilient. Good garden practices, such as annual top dressings of compost, lime as needed to near neutral ph, grooming, and a the best tool of all, an attentive gardener, will keep your strawberries thriving.

There are many elegant schemes for maintaining strawberry beds. The urban gardener may see past quite a few as directed towards the commercial grower’s desire for a good crop. Strawberries remain hand-picked and rely upon either quick freezing or speedy transport to market. The urban gardener enjoys the ultimate satisfaction of discovery. Ours is the pleasure of spying a glimpse of glossy red under deep green serrated leaves. Better yet, the journey from plant to palette is measured in heartbeats. Gently savored, strawberries are incomparable. Let’s start with the plants habits for growing tips that work wonderfully for me and anyone else with a little luck.

Photo Courtesy of Leonard Moorehead

Strawberries are often passed from friend to friend in the best traditions of home gardening. Stringy roots join together in a crown that supports three pronged leaves. After a May bloom and ripening period of 4 or 5 weeks, the luscious berries transition from green into white and finally red. The best time to harvest ahead of your chief competitor, robins are drawn to my sunniest patch, is when fully red. Sometimes slugs may damage berries; slugs do well in damp mulches in any garden. Sprinkle table salt on them or plunge cardboard paper towel tubes into water to moisten and leave in shady or distressed areas. Slugs will set up home; fold the tubes and tuck under a spade full of soil for disposal. I sprinkle sand around strawberries to discourage sensitive under bellies and resign myself to sharing part of the harvest with the birds and insects in the garden. Compassion tames animosity.

Lots goes on after a fairly long harvest period, for most varieties in June, for others, the so-called ever bearing, a bump in June and again in September with sporadic berries in all but the dog days of July. Healthy “mother” plants send out runners over the hay mulch. Smaller versions form wherever the runner touches earth, usually within 12-18 inches of the mother. This is when various methods are suggested. I tuck in the runner with nascent crown under the mulch, sometimes going to the length of pinning the runner into the soil with a half brick, often a handful of soil pulled aside, the runner and new crown tucked in, soil patted down, mulch pulled back and we’re done for the moment. You have plenty to do in other parts of the garden just now. Snip and separate from the mother plant after the new runner has independent growth. Turn under the mother plant despite its apparent vigor. Inevitably, everyone overlooks a mother plant or two and it’s no disaster. New strawberry plants have larger and more berries, yields decline precipitously on older plants. Each mother plant will sprout many runners. Given favorable conditions a strawberry patch forms low dense groups in apparent disarray. Attentive gardeners keep the patch mulched. Strawberries are not difficult to nurture, the primary challenges of cultivation are restraining their forays further and further afoot.

Long ago my tolerant nature opened another world to me. Young strawberries leap from bed to turf. I snip the runner, tuck the new plant further down the garden path along the edge or under a fruit tree. Over a few seasons, strawberries form excellent low green margins along the garden paths and under fruit trees. Nature volunteers space to provide fine picking and dozens of new plants each year. The first and last planting of strawberries was five years ago and far away from the original location. For many gardeners, strawberry cultivation is more a process of thinning than planting. Don’t overlook just how much fun strawberries are in the garden. Sometimes the strawberry suffers from familiarity. Not so, don’t allow ubiquitous flavoring or marketing define appreciation of any garden gem.

Container gardeners have the old fashioned strawberry pot. Do not distain. Obtain the largest strawberry pot you can afford. A strawberry pot is tall and has open side pockets. Fill with your best soil mixture and put a young strawberry plant in each pocket and the top. Keep moist and in sunny or bright light. Strawberries not only thrive in large strawberry pots, their noble appearance makes for handsome presentation in every season. Shelter in a protected place over the winter or bring indoors over the darkest months. Force strawberries in a sunny window in January and quarter turn the pot with each watering for early growth. Imagination conspires with need in the strawberry world. Stepped up pancake short or long stack beds work fine. Strawberry containers on tall legs prove very convenient for those who prefer their garden plants at various heights. If tired of strawberries in a strawberry pot, try wax begonias or petunias for stunning floral displays.

Few gardens are memorable over time and space yet strawberries will always endure within. These healthy and tasty berries present fine opportunities to draw parent and child together. The sturdy plants withstand handling, the heady fragrance of a bed full of ripe berries lasts a lifetime and who can resist a kiss from berry stained lips? Much love is found in the strawberry patch. Our world is a better place each June as pick your own farms and urban gardeners alike enter the garden, baskets in hand, pleasure on their minds. Dearest strawberries remain among my oldest friends.

Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.