Tucking in the strawberries

When I said we were all done with the garden after we planted the garlic, I was forgetting about the strawberries. Since my dad wasn’t going to be using the raised beds on the deck this year, Hilda thought it would be nice to plant strawberries there. We planted one variety that bears in June and a newer variety that is “ever-bearing,” that is, bred so that it will produce fruit throughout the summer. The instructions said that we should not allow June-bearing variety to produce fruit in their first summer (i.e., we should remove all blossoms and/or immature fruits), but that we could harvest berries from the ever-bearing varieties after they had been in the ground for 6 weeks. We dutifully followed these instructions. Not surprisingly for the first year, yields were low. Hilda and I took turns putting the daily picking of 3 or 4 ripe strawberries on our cereal. Next year, we hope to have enough for jam.

But first, the strawberries have to survive the winter in the raised beds. The strawberry plants were expensive, and it they froze out during the winter, all would be for naught. Had we planted them in the ground, there would be no worries. The raised beds, however, have the potential of getting to lower temperatures than the soil.  As a precaution, Terry rooted some of the stolons in pots and heeled those into his nursery beds (in the ground) for the winter. If the raised beds freeze out, we have a backup.

We waited and waited for the strawberries to die back for the winter. Last Tuesday, Terry decided it was finally time to winterize the beds. 

One of the strawberry beds ready to be winterized

We cut a length of row cover to put over the berries and piled mulch on top of the row cover. The idea is that we can use the row cover to lift off the mulch when spring comes. Hopefully, this will protect the strawberry roots from a hard freeze. Goodnight, strawberries!

Row cover, then mulch

The final touches to the mulch

We practiced on the two small beds outside the garage. We chased the turkeys out from under the bird feeders when we walked around to the deck. Few things are funnier than watching turkeys run. It’s a prance, almost. I suppose it is so comic because the part of the leg that is most visible seems to bend backwards. We expect a knee, but we are looking at an ankle with greatly elongated foot bones. Birds stand on their toes.

By the time we were done on the deck, the turkeys were sneaking back to the feeders from the other direction. We spooked them again as we put away the scissors and leftover row cover.

Turkeys sneaking back to the feeders

Most of the week was cloudy and drizzly. All the snow melted, helped along by high winds. The oak leaves did mad cartwheels over the lawn. On Friday afternoon, the sky finally cleared and the sun came out. I put on my Wellies and went for a walk. As soon as I got outside, I heard a familiar, if distant, sound. I squinted into the sun and just barely picked them out—hundreds of sandhill cranes! There were several groups of them, sometimes formed up in ragged Vs headed southeast, sometimes a swirling vortex of birds riding the thermals upward. I was so lucky to be out at that moment. By the time I came back from the creek, they were gone. 
One thing I have always loved in the winter is the architecture of branches backlit by the sunset. I even painted a mural of it on my bedroom wall in my youth.

Bare branches in the sunset

Such a lovely end of the day!