Last spring we bought a dozen little strawberry plants, and tucked them into one end of one of the raised beds. They didn't fruit much; I think we had three or four berries, but then we didn't expect much from such young plants, so we weren't upset about it. We figured they'd take a year to settle in.
Well, they may have been too young to be fruitful, but they certainly got the message on multiplying. The new strawberry bed is finished; today I set up the irrigation for it, and hauled in a good load of manure and compost. The new bed is 42' by 3' and I figured I'd have plenty of room for the strawberries that were currently crammed into a 6' x 3' area. They looked very crowded, sure, but the new bed is seven times as big, so surely they'd spread out quite nicely. I even thought that I might have to buy a few more to sort of round things out.
*Pause for hysterical laughter.*
I began teasing out and cutting apart daughter plants; I stopped counting after the first hundred. I teased, cut and planted for hours, and I'm not done. The new bed is nearly full. The old bed still has plants in it. If they are as successful with fruitful next year as they were this year with multiply, we're going to be eating a lot of berries.
Shortcake, anyone?
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