Winterizing the Strawberries

 

It was about 45 degrees, sunny, and almost no wind today, so it seemed like a good time to put the strawberries to bed for the winter. This is a first time event, so I hope it works. The theory of how to do it came from University of Minnesota Extension. They suggest clearing the bed (though they counsel waiting until the leaves have turned brown and floppy), cutting the plants back to the crowns, and then putting them under 4" of straw mulch. I suppose - and it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch - that's where they get their name "strawberries." 

Anyhoo, this was the first bed that I surrounded with chicken wire last spring, and as a test case I made a series of mistakes that make it look pretty tacky. As I worked my way around, I kept thinking about whether or not I'd have time to re-work the wire. It turns out that it takes more time than you'd think to take an 8x4 bed from this:

To this:

To this:

It's also not the most attractive wire cover, but I think it is a good idea, given the amount of squirrel activity in the yard, to protect the crowns from them.

It may, in fact, be wise to leave it in place (or possibly replace it with something more attractive) in the spring, because we seem to have cardinals nesting in the adjacent lilac bush near our shed. 

The hatches should now be truly battened for winter. The garlic is in. The strawberries are cut back and mulched with straw. The beds have been nourished and mulched with leaves for next year. That's probably about it until we start planting pepper & tomato seedlings come February.

The months have been flying by here. When you aren't a robot-slave commuting back and forth from an airless, windowless petri-dish cubical, and you're able to see the days go by and watch the sun and spend a little more time outside, you realize how swiftly the seasons go by, and how much less compartmentalized they seem to be than in the Before Time, before the Pandemic set me free.