Strawberry Patch

The kids are out of their teeny weeny trees this weekend.  Not surprisingly, what with school and all.  We've been in a cycle of run around like the demented fiends that they are, start fighting with your sister, scream, scream, scream some more, throw, hit or break something, allow yourself to be ushered off to watch TV by your fraught parent.  Well, okay, by their fraught father.  It being the "I'm feeling stabby," day of the month, hubby chose to relegate me to the front garden.  Yes,  he has this being married to a woman business down to a fine art.

To indulge my burning desire to chop and hack things, I tidied up the strawberry patch, under the watchful eye of my site supervisor, Pepper.  She is now fifteen and well experienced at these things.

The patch is in too hot a spot (but at the time of planting I didn't have much choice in location).  So most of the strawbs get roasted off when the temperature is above 35.  The possums help themselves to the rest.  Sigh.

But, rather to my surprise, the Chandler* strawberries - which are the most awesome strawberryish strawberries I have ever tasted - have produced runners (little baby strawberry plants) all over the place.  So I spent the rest of the morning planting them along the edges of the paths.  I ended up with 57 runners (yes I counted them. Why? What are you saying??)

I admit some are looking rather unhappy, and given that a few of the runners had practically no roots I'm expecting quite a few casualties.  But still.  Even if half of them survive there's going to be lots and lots of fabulous strawberries next spring. Rather chuffed about that actually.

*You can get Chandler strawberries from Diggers - they're an heirloom strawberry and not usually available in nurseries.  In the strawberry bed I also planted some nursery available strawbs (after a slight snail catastrophe killed off  thirteen of my twenty Chandlers - yes I counted and yes I still remember).  The nursery strawberries are not as strawberry tasting, and less sweet, and have been much, much less prolific in the amount of berries they've produced. The only other type to produce runners were the Tiogas - and these had tiny roots - I've planted them out but don't hold much hope.