strawberry
I pootled at the allotment on Thursday -- doing fiddly but necessary tasks like tying in the new tomato growth, pruning the grapevine, picking caterpillars off the cabbage seedlings, watering all the wilting things.
Just as I was about to leave, I spotted something -- something red and glorious in the strawberry patch.
One of our other main tasks this year at the allotment (besides the general weed-clearance and tidying up) was to sort out the strawberries. For the last two years they've been sat in a couple of grow-bags in amongst the raspberries. They never got much light or water, so the strawberries never got particularly big; and they got far too much attention from slugs and woodlice, so the ones that did manage to swell up and ripen were three-quarters eaten before we could harvest them.
Since 2007 we've had a load of carpet covering a raised bed and a particularly weedy patch. This year we removed the carpet. Matt dug over the raised bed, taking out all the nasty couch grass rhizomes. Half the top-soil got transferred to the greenhouse. The rest got raked over, and then I planted out all the little strawberry plants that had survived a winter of neglect in their grow-bag. Dad gave me some more strawberry plants for my birthday, so they went in too.
Now there are fifty little strawberry plants, in lovely crumbly soil, basking in the full sun. Small green berries are appearing, and new blossoms are still forming, so it looks like we might have a reasonably long season of strawberry delight.
None of them are near being ripe yet, though, except for this one little pioneer. I promptly picked it and took it home, where Matt sliced it into eight, and we ate it for pudding with sliced banana and Greek yoghurt.
Just as I was about to leave, I spotted something -- something red and glorious in the strawberry patch.
One of our other main tasks this year at the allotment (besides the general weed-clearance and tidying up) was to sort out the strawberries. For the last two years they've been sat in a couple of grow-bags in amongst the raspberries. They never got much light or water, so the strawberries never got particularly big; and they got far too much attention from slugs and woodlice, so the ones that did manage to swell up and ripen were three-quarters eaten before we could harvest them.
Since 2007 we've had a load of carpet covering a raised bed and a particularly weedy patch. This year we removed the carpet. Matt dug over the raised bed, taking out all the nasty couch grass rhizomes. Half the top-soil got transferred to the greenhouse. The rest got raked over, and then I planted out all the little strawberry plants that had survived a winter of neglect in their grow-bag. Dad gave me some more strawberry plants for my birthday, so they went in too.
Now there are fifty little strawberry plants, in lovely crumbly soil, basking in the full sun. Small green berries are appearing, and new blossoms are still forming, so it looks like we might have a reasonably long season of strawberry delight.
None of them are near being ripe yet, though, except for this one little pioneer. I promptly picked it and took it home, where Matt sliced it into eight, and we ate it for pudding with sliced banana and Greek yoghurt.