FALL CLEAN-UP DAY THREE: This past summer the Chandler strawberry won my award for my favorite variety of the five that we currently have on the farm. Strawberries are good, no matter what variety, but there is just something about the Chandler berries that stole my heart!
I have two raised beds of 3 varieties of strawberries (Ozark Beauty, Allstar, and Quinault) that are a couple of years old, 4 grow bags of Enclair berries that I planted in early spring, and the GreenStalk was filled with Chandlers and Berried Treasure berries from Proven Winners that I picked up from Home Depot in the early spring.
And they were all a gigantic mess!
I have one way of cleaning and preparing strawberries for the winter! I cut off all the dead leaves and almost all the green ones and cover them with a mulch of some kind. This works well with my Georgia climate and each year they seem to pop back very well!
As you may have seen in another post, we had a HUGE Japanese beetle infestation in early summer that attacked the GreenStalk hard. No matter what I tried, I could not get rid of them or even keep them at bay. I was so desperate that I almost turned to very NON-organic options. You can read about that lovely event HERE!
Despite the beetles’ best efforts, most of the GreenStalk plants survived. The Chandler plants did far better than the Berried Treasure ones, however. But I hadn’t removed any of the ones that didn’t make it.
So, it was time! I pulled all the plants that died, cut all the stems the way I am accustomed to doing, and transplanted the Eclair plants from the grow bags into the empty spots left from the dead plants in the GreenStalk. Gave everything a fast water, and tada…another cleanup project is complete!
This wasn’t a huge project but I am starting to see an impact on my homestead with all of these little cleanup projects. For me, there is nothing like ending one season and prepping for the next by organizing and cleaning up things that have been left undone throughout the year. Only a few more projects are left and I will be all set for seed starting season…in ONE month! Woohoo!
