STRAWBERRIES...
The first soil of the season is worked, and ready for the new strawberry planting. Four-thousand new strawberry crowns await on our porch to be plunged through black plastic into their prepared beds. Weather reports make it look like we'll have them planted yet this week! The black plastic is a weed control technique but also can keep the soil temps up a degree or two. Though we don't really like using plastic for our crops, we've found that since strawberries are a multi-year investment, the use of plastic mulch for this specific crop seems justified. Some fellow farmers' seems to think we're crazy for not using it on many other crops, including tomatoes, spouting out claims of higher yields and less weeding labor required, but quite frankly, we don't like the looks of it in our fields. "Plasticulture" as plastic intensive agriculture is sometimes referred it as, is just not our cup of tea. However, we will continue to use it this season for those highly demanded strawberries.
Last year we give credit and many thanks to our neighbor whom offered his second well for use at the farm. We installed a new pump and electric line, and ran irrigation lines across the driveway and out into the fields. For the first time ever, we were able to set up hand-lines (3-inch aluminum pipes) and felt like we were one of the big dogs now. Thanks to another neighbor's offering of 'sticks' (lengths of 3-inch hand-lines) we could overhead irrigate not only the cut lettuce mix, leeks, and flowers, but also the strawberries. And let me tell you, the strawberries loved it, and responded to every watering after a harvest with a new flush of berries- it doesn't get much better than that! We all know that sometimes it's really hard to change a good thing, so with this years' planting of new strawberry's we're trying to replicate what we had last year. The location will be different, the new strawberries will be planted in part of last season's pumpkin and winter squash fields (at Paul's parents property further down on Morehead Rd). The patch of annual flowers will also relocate to that location this year and will be irrigated with 2-inch hand-lines (which by the way, we need just a couple more sticks of to reach the lengths of the entire beds, just in case you know of any throughout the county not in use). So while your driving West on Morehead Rd, this summer in route to visiting Kellog beach, Tolowa Dunes, or the Eco-Dairy, keep your eyes peeled for a lovely view of flowers and strawberries in the foreground.
