Yet more strawberry musings
Jun. 18th, 2008 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayThe rot:ripe ratio is definitely over 3, maybe approaching 4. The 'cull' container was literally overflowing by the time I came in. One of these years, we should really get a composting system set up; I'm throwing out pounds of organic matter every morning.
The weather recently has been, in some senses, perfect for strawberries. Rain at night to keep them fat, sun in the day to ripen them up. But it also means that I fall further and further behind. Those fat-with-rain strawberries drag their stalks down to meet the damp ground, and are often bad before I can get to them.
I've decided to write off the bottom row of the garden as a loss for the time being, and try to get better caught up on the upper regions. Sigh.
There were a few years when I was unemployed during June, and able to do the three harvests/day that the garden really merits. Oh well, a steady paycheck has much to be said for it. Maybe I can manage to get home early enough to do a second run, at least a few nights a week. Harvesting by street light (or even twilight) is not a terribly feasible proposition; it's too hard to judge colors.
If I spend so much effort on culling, why don't I just leave the bad ones on the vine? Several reasons. Firstly, they're yucky. Secondly (as already mentioned, I think), I want the plant to put energy into new, better strawberries. Thirdly, removing the weight of the rotten strawberry sometimes lets the stalk spring back, reducing the ground-exposure of the remaining berries.
There's one last factor, but it's not the least one. I already mentioned that the number one cause of strawberry wastage is rot due to contact with damp earth. Number two is probably animal depredations (the birds are getting bold!), but a *very* close third would be rot spreading from one strawberry to a neighbor. If I don't remove the going-bad ones early enough, the rot will spread to every nearby berry.
The weather recently has been, in some senses, perfect for strawberries. Rain at night to keep them fat, sun in the day to ripen them up. But it also means that I fall further and further behind. Those fat-with-rain strawberries drag their stalks down to meet the damp ground, and are often bad before I can get to them.
I've decided to write off the bottom row of the garden as a loss for the time being, and try to get better caught up on the upper regions. Sigh.
There were a few years when I was unemployed during June, and able to do the three harvests/day that the garden really merits. Oh well, a steady paycheck has much to be said for it. Maybe I can manage to get home early enough to do a second run, at least a few nights a week. Harvesting by street light (or even twilight) is not a terribly feasible proposition; it's too hard to judge colors.
If I spend so much effort on culling, why don't I just leave the bad ones on the vine? Several reasons. Firstly, they're yucky. Secondly (as already mentioned, I think), I want the plant to put energy into new, better strawberries. Thirdly, removing the weight of the rotten strawberry sometimes lets the stalk spring back, reducing the ground-exposure of the remaining berries.
There's one last factor, but it's not the least one. I already mentioned that the number one cause of strawberry wastage is rot due to contact with damp earth. Number two is probably animal depredations (the birds are getting bold!), but a *very* close third would be rot spreading from one strawberry to a neighbor. If I don't remove the going-bad ones early enough, the rot will spread to every nearby berry.