Strawberries, eventually

My fantasy about home-grown strawberries in June resulted in this hopeful new experiment in our back yard. Photo by John Denniston.

The strawberry plants were an impulse buy, I have to admit. But there I was on a rare trip to a garden centre in these non-shopping times, and the damp bundle of 25 sweet little plants, wrapped in burlap, leaped into my hands. After a winter of avoiding wooden strawberries from California, the fantasy was strong: Oh, to walk out the back door and pick ripe strawberries in June!

As always with impulse buys, recrimination and regret followed. Where, in a tree-surrounded garden, is there enough sunshine to grow heat-loving strawberries? Shall we really tear up the lawn for this dubious experiment? The capper was learning that all strawberry buds and blooms should be ruthlessly torn off the first year to ensure the plants’ energy goes into root-building.

But John and I are feeling full of enterprise these days, and we’ve been priding ourselves on our creative use of second-hand materials to make new things. It turned out that we had just enough left-over cedar and just enough remaining compost to make and fill a three-foot by three-foot raised bed. And we found a rare spot in the garden that may just get enough sunshine for strawberries.

 There will be no walking out the back door to pick them this year, but I like to think there’s hope. Maybe some June day in future, I will be looking at a luscious bowl of home-grown strawberries and deciding that my isolation-days impulse buy wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Luckily for me, John knows how to build things. Here's the beginning of the new raised-bed frame for the strawberry plants. Photo by John Denniston.

One end of the box is in place at the top left; the other sides are in process. Photo by John Denniston.

The completed box, ready for its new life. Photo by John Denniston.

Here's me, tearing up cardboard to line the bottom of the box. The idea is that it will prevent the grass overtaking the new strawberry plants after they and the compost are added. Photo by John Denniston. 

Rich (I hope) soil from our own composting efforts fills the box. Add the plants and time, and there will be strawberries -- eventually.