Luscious Little Strawberry

This is a catch up post. Last year one of the first plants I bought when we moved into the house was a lone little strawberry. You can see it here. Well, sure enough that one plant produced about 20 delicious little bites of happiness! Wow, are home grown strawberries better than the ones you buy in the supermarket, that's for sure. Not even close. And they are so easy to grow. The only thing I was worried about was birds- but as you can see from this picture, I just put a tepee of bird netting around it to prevent any birdies nipping away my berries. I didn't have any problems at all. I pretty much left the plant alone once it finished producing, and it ended up sending out several runners which found homes in the ground around the pot.

In just a few weeks, I plan on extending a small existing raised bed into that area and planting out about 20 plants. I think it would probably be able to fit about twice as many, but I figure I'll start small then let them grow bigger themselves (it will be cheaper that way and give me extra room to grow some more peas this year). I already planted tomatoes and peppers in that bed last year, which apparently is bad because it can give the strawberries diseases. Nothing I can do about that though, with such a small garden. So I'm just going to make sure to get resistant varieties. I don't know what they'll have in the store but I'm thinking I should get some June-bearers and some day-neutral so I'll have a longer supply of fresh berries. These are the possible varieities for my area according to the local Master Gardening program: Early - Earliglow, Noreaster, Mid - Allstar, Guardian and Neutral - Tristar.