Back to Eden Strawberries

This one is a play directly out of Paul Gautschi’s book.

We planted 12 strawberry plants around a dogwood tree in spring 2017. The plants all doubled if not tripled and we had tremendous success with their growth of new runners and leaves.

• We planted in mostly shade,
• We wood chip mulched the bed 5 months prior to planting
• We planted about 1/3 of the bed with borage for increased bee activity and companion planting

We never watered, and aside from some pesky hickory nuts that rooted (thanks a lot, squirrels) and a random fern, there weren’t any weeds to speak of.

This is now November 3, 2017, and I’m mulching the strawberry bed. 

The idea is that the strawberry greens will decompose and put back fertility into the soil, and the mulch will suppress weeds and only the strongest strawberries will sprout next spring. 

This means that the fruiting growth will be optimal for putting out berries and we should have a bumper crop summer 2018.

Here’s to praying it works out.