Question: What should we do with our beds of strawberries when they are finished, how can we get them ready for next year’s crop? Carla, Harrisburg, PA
Answer: Carla, The planting season is far from over for the serious-minded vegetable gardener who wants to reap a harvest in fall and put away food for the winter. Early sown vegetables which are now being used leave ground free for later crops.
All through July, lettuce, carrots, beets and cabbage can be sown. The cabbage should be the early heading kind.
Strawberry Beds
June bearing strawberries are almost finished. If this year’s crop was the first, you can renovate the bed by cleaning off all immature and weak plants, although the ideal plan is to destroy the old bed each year. A new bed made in spring should be coming along to provide next year’s crop of berries, if no new bed was made, cultivate and clean the old bed and put on a dressing of manure and compost. When runners form, space these 6 or more inches apart. When the area is filled, remove all other runners that appear. Water heavily in dry weather.
If the early flowers were removed from everbearing varieties, the plants will be producing more blossoms. Allow these to form fruit for Angus’ and later picking. The difficulties to overcome with everbearing berries are a dry soil and heat. Keep all runners removed and mulch heavily with sawdust, shavings or anything else that will shade the ground and keep in moisture. Water frequently and feed with liquid concentrate every ten days.
Raspberries Ready For Picking
Both regular and everbearing raspberries will soon be ready for picking. Water is needed to produce plump fruit. In a dry soil the berries become mealy. Fruit picked in the early morning and kept cool lasts longer than that picked later. Everbearing varieties produce autumn fruit at the tips of this year’s new canes.
The summer crop is produced on last year’s canes. Pinching the tips of the new canes in late July and August will help set a better crop. Water and feed heavily, as with strawberries. Currants and gooseberries ripen their fruits later. With all of these fruits, a cover mulch is better than cultivating the soil since the roots are right under the surface. In addition to protecting the roots, this mulch will keep down suckers.
Blueberries are ripe when the stem end of the fruit has a dark rich blue color. Berries with a reddish tinge are sour. When berries are ripe, they should be picked once a week. If the bushes are full grown or nearly so and are not fruiting heavily, the soil is either too poor or not acid enough. Organic matter and an application of 5-10-5 fertilizer, 1/2 pound per bush will benefit the plants. If the foliage is pale, have the soil tested to find out whether it is sufficiently acid. If it is not, work in plenty of acid peat and keep a mulch of this or sawdust around the root area.
