Transplanting strawberries in autumn
We were disappointed with the flavor and size
of our strawberries this spring, so we're working to remedy the
situation. A week or so ago, we renovated
the one and a half year old beds, pulling out a lot of the plants
so that the ones left behind had room to grow. Meanwhile, we
transplanted strawberries from the two and a half year old beds to
start entirely new beds, in preparation for rotating the old strawberry
beds into a garlic patch.
Most gardeners are used to planting new strawberries in the spring, and
if I'd had my act together that would have been a good time to start my
new beds. But spring is such a frantically busy time in the
garden that I never got a chance to touch the strawberries.
Instead, I'm following the lead of the local you-pick operation that
transplants its strawberries in early September then eats fruits from
them the next spring. If you plant early enough in the fall ---
and your plants don't die from the heat or get deer-munched during
their critical period of gaining a foothold --- they should get enough
fall sunlight to do nearly as well as spring planted
strawberries.
We experimented with planting strawberries in the middle of the summer
(the end of June), and those plants mostly died. The ones I
planted a week ago, though, are doing well, already putting up new
leaves. I can't wait to taste them in spring 2010!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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