Strawberry Fields Forever

By posting these photos, I stand in minor danger of turning this blog from a gardening blog into a dog blog, but I couldn't resist sharing these new pictures of Bella.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush took them with her iPad after she returned from helping me pick these strawberries, and slightly blurry as they may be, I thought they were adorable.   Look at those beagle-hungry eyes.  I think Bella would like a strawberry, don't you?

To deflect any criticism about yet another post reflecting the intense love between a gardener and his faithful companion, we will feebly pretend instead that this blog entry is about my triumph over the fickle scarlet-skinned god of the strawberry patch.  Because, really, that's what it is, a bragging post unmitigated by any trace of self-restraint, even while I know deep down that I'm depleting my gardening karma account and probably will soon be punished by a June freeze for my impudence.

NEWS FLASH:  I HAVE HARVESTED HOME-GROWN STRAWBERRIES IN KANSAS!

Devoted readers of this blog know of my deep, life-long love for strawberries.  You've endured my epic, all-out campaign to get a strawberry patch through the August heat and drought, the bitter winters, and the late spring freezes that define Kansas gardening.  You have suffered through my purchase and erection of a shade house and my defensive measures and counterattacks against marauding deer.  You have bravely endured the whimpers and the whining and the woeful wailing against the cruelties of nature and the Kansas Flint Hills.  I have successfully spared you (till now) my agony during the past 3 weeks of cold, March-like temperatures and rains that have conspired to prolong ripening and increase rotting.

ProfessorRoush can publicly declare now that it has all been worth it, every drop of sweat, every aching muscle, every curse muttered in the general direction of the unsympathetic earth.   Mrs. ProfessorRoush, Bella, and I harvested 2 or 3 quarts of sweet strawberries over the last week or so, and last night we filled this bowl with another 4 or 5 quarts.  I'm sure there will be a few more quarts to come over the next week.  Not a grand harvest, but they exist and they made it to the reddened finish line.  And I accomplished it all through perseverance, labor, and sheer determination, not to mention the wad of cash I bestowed on the shade house manufacturer.   I refuse to calculate what a $1000 or so total divided by 10-15 quarts of strawberries works out to be on a per quart basis.  Not including, of course, my time and emotional trauma.

Whatever.  These are my strawberries, and, as Bella's twitching nose confirms, they are sweet and they are ripe and mouth-watering.   For one season, for one year, I have grown strawberries!

Heavenly Shadeberries

Friends, I generally strive to not be a braggart bore.  That is usually an easily-reached goal, because gardening in the Flint Hills doesn't allow me many opportunities for successful outcomes to brag about.  But I must, I simply must, take this opportunity to show you my $1000 strawberry patch.

 

Frequent readers are fully aware of my belief that on the seventh day, just before resting, God created strawberries to be the evolutionary apex of fruity perfection.  You also know that this past Spring, tired of my inability to oversummer and overwinter a decent stand of mature strawberry plants, I purchased and installed a 14'X24' shade house, as previously blogged, to protect my delicate young plants from the searing rays of the July and August Kansas sun.  I placed black plastic between rows at planting and laid down soaker hoses for watering.  Over the summer, I watered it about once a week, implanted the runners back into the rows, weeded incessantly and protected my pretties from man, insect, and beast.

 

The result of all that money and labor is shown here.  Even in the grower's Eden of my boyhood Indiana, I've never seen a patch of strawberries with so much promise.  I recently removed the shade cloth and put it up for the winter, both to protect the cloth and to allow the strawberries a little more October sunshine.   There are four varieties planted here, early and late, all June-bearers, laid out in rows that are two feet wide and two feet apart.  I would note that 'Earliglo' was the most vigorous, followed by 'Surecrop', 'Jewel', and 'Sparkle'. Now I get to spend all winter salivating over the promise of the red sweetness that will be mine next spring. 

 

I will, of course, also be worried all winter that I've jinxed myself by merely writing this bragging blog.  I'll cover them with straw in a month and pray to the Winter God that he doesn't make it too cold in January.  I'm going to leave the cover off until near harvest next year, and then I will place it on at the last moment so that I can savor the ripe strawberries in the shade (and perhaps keep the birds scared away).   If you need me next June, either day or night, look for me lounging peacefully amidst the colors and scents of heaven, stuffed to the gills with bursting red fruit.  I hope.

A Shade Of Relief

 At last, my shade house is complete.  I took advantage of a cool Sunday last week to finish attaching the baseboards, stretch the cover, and secure it in place.  A cool Sunday in the late June of Kansas means that by 2:00 p.m. I was still roasted and mildly dehydrated in the low 90's temps, but, hey, it was done.

It is astonishing what the presence of a mere high tunnel shade house does to the aura of a garden.  It immediately feels like the garden is composed less of a series of beds plopped into the middle of prairie grass, and instead it promotes a sense of a purposeful and planned garden.  Despite placement deep down into the vegetable garden and off to the side, its existence somehow balances the overall garden.  "Here," it says, "is a thoughtful and determined gardener."  Thank God, I was able to erect it well enough that it isn't askew and disclosing the gardeners complete desperation to fight the searing Kansas sun.   I should also be thankful that I didn't erect a real greenhouse else I'd have delusions that I might someday become a decent gardener instead of a serial plant killer.

If you ignore the weeds in front and behind the structure, the laughing masses of weeds that I swear weren't there two days ago, you'll see that I followed my original purpose and placed it around and over my very pampered strawberry bed.  I've done about everything I can now, mulching the strawberries in black plastic so that the natural rain is concentrated in the rows and the competition of weeds is lessened.  I've run drip hoses up and down the rows so that the mere turn of a faucet at the house can mitigate the July scorch of the prairies.  I'm carefully directing runners back into the rows, to fill in the bare spaces and increase the yield.  Now I must merely wait through Fall, Winter, and Spring to harvest the fruits of my labors, hoping all along that Winter doesn't get too cold and dry or that Spring doesn't recognize the humor of a late freeze.   A garden might not provide fruit or sustenance, but every day it provides the gardener a lesson about the virtues of tolerance and patience.

Made in the Shade

ProfessorRoush has had a busy week of gardening with more to come.  In addition to last weekend and the evenings, I took a couple of days off work so that I could exhaust myself in the garden.  Two days, sunup to sundown, and I'm tanned like a tanning-bed addict.  No, now don't get too excited, girls.  Only on my arms, face and neck.  My snow white legs are the really titillating image.  A classic "farmer's tan" on a gardener.

It's time to unveil  the skeleton of a project which began on delivery of a large package last Wednesday.  There, down in the vegetable garden.  Do you see it?  I'm not going outside on this rainy Saturday morning to give you a better view, but how about the closeup below?  Sorry about the window screen in the way, but that's a frame for a shade house, amazingly and partially erected by yours truly.




I can live without many things in my garden, but I'm tired of growing a nice crop of strawberry plants each spring and then watching them burn to a crisp in July and August.  So I resolved this year to build a shade house to help the plants get through the brutal Kansas sun so that I can enjoy a proper harvest next year.  This shade house is 24'X14' and covers the entire patch.  Using a sledgehammer for the first time in a decade, I drove the 14 posts down through the rock and clay all by myself in a single evening.  Well to be honest, I drove 10 of them and I dug and cemented the 4 corner posts in place to help hold the house down against the occasional tornado.  Chalk up one victory for the aging gardener!   Right now I estimate the first ten years of strawberries will work out to about $1/berry.

By no means is this the end of my gardening week, either.  Today, over 100 gardeners from Omaha are visiting my garden.  They came down to Manhattan to see the KSU Gardens and ended up asking the Chamber of Commerce to visit a couple of "large" local gardens.   My garden may not qualify as unique or educational, but "large" got me on the list.  The garden, despite the waning roses and the long gone irises and peonies, is in about as good a shape as I've ever had it after a week of effort.  And to top it off, tomorrow is the annual Manhattan Area Garden Show and I'm the roving photographer for it.  My gardening week will end Sunday night, and for once I'll be glad to leave the garden and go back to paying work!