Strawberry Season

Ripples is growing strawberries!

Along with cilantro, peas, and lavender, we now have strawberries after over a year of waiting!  

First strawberries.

Strawberry basket.

In 2011, I bought one strawberry plant and created a hanging basket for it out of coconut fiber cut into a circle.  After filling the basket with potting soil, I added fertilizer for acid-loving plants (Organic Holly-Tone) to help the pH of the soil be right for strawberries.  Of that, all I remember was a horrible smell from the fertilizer bag, and Ryan & I making a huge mess on the living room carpet as we tried to cut through the coconut fibers with scissors (not easy!). What a time we had. Ah, memories.  And today, after a year of watering and helping the strawberry send out it’s runners into the basket, we are rewarded!  Sort of.  We have about 13 strawberries growing from the basket, all mostly mutants.  They are quite small, some are shriveled, and most have bulbous growths coming out of them (so they aren’t your typically shaped berries).  A few look normal.  I have yet to eat one, shamefully letting them go to the birds.  These are June-bearing strawberries, however, and they’re somewhat early with the mild winter, so I have hope that at least once this summer we’ll have at least one strawberry to eat.  If we do, I’ll be sure to post it! 🙂