It's been a fairly uneventful spring and early summer around the patch. It was a wet spring so we were about two weeks late getting in and working things up. Even then it still was almost too damp to do a proper workup of our heavy clay soil. So there's lots of mini bricks that formed and will take a while to break down.
New this year is a trial of open pollenated beans and tomatoes. Those will be the topic of another post later on.
The big chore this year was renovating the strawberry patch. To maintain healthy plants and keep yields high, the patch needs to be completely replaced about every three to four years. In early April we planted 30 Sparkle plants from Johnny's. The key with a new bed is to watch closely and pinch off any flowers in May, and runners in mid-summer. this is so the mother plants can put all of their energy into establishing themselves. By mid-June, they are putting out three to four runners per plant per week. These need to be cut off, but you also can take the largest and healthiest and plant them between the mother plants to help fill in the row. These root quickly and once established the runner (umbilical) to the mother plant is cut away.
Once that's done, the only chore is to keep clipping additional runners and keep the bed watered, weeded and fertilized. In late fall it will be strawed in and ready for winter.
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