strawberries!!!

Last year I planted bare root strawberry plants.

And they did a whole lot of diddly squat.

I wasn't sure if it was because it was their first year,

or more likely because of the far-less-than-ideal way in which I planted them.

We were making a new garden bed and I had just learned about sheet mulching.

I literally put a row of overlapping cardboard boxes down,

and covered the row with mulch and Boo added a little bit of topsoil-compost mix.

I thought it would be a miracle if they ever did much of anything given those conditions.

This year they started to produce! 

It was really fun watching the blossoms come in 

and how the little teeny tiny strawberry starts to bud out from the center.

then the petals fall away 

and the little berry grows...

and grows some more...

and voila, a row of strawberry plants starting to fruit!

Bootsy added more mulch this year.

But unfortunately I forgot to fertilize the "strawbs."

Despite my forgetfulness, we still managed to get some really delicious berries.

These are day-neutral variety called Tristar.

Day-neutral types cycle through a fairly continuous crop, 

and are also referred to as "ever-bearing."

Mmmmmmmmmmn!

Nothing like a juicy strawberry warm from the sun.

Definitely not enough in one day's picking to make a pie...

Our strawberry row is in a fenced garden, but it's not bird proof or ant-proof,

and we've seen both birds and ants trying to nab our precious red jewels...
 

Maybe I'll remember to fertilize next year 

and we'll also figure out how to outwit the ants and birds

and then we might have enough for pie!