Bare Root Strawberries Are In!

It's our second year planting bare root strawberries that we ordered on-line.  Last year we had about 22 plants.  I was disappointed in the yield.  We were also plagued by slugs.  Those slimy critters found the berries before we could pick them and ate them up.  More on that in a minute.  This year, until we have a better process for growing them in place, we only ordered 5 plants.  In an act of kindness, the nursery in Oregon that we ordered them from included 7 plants.  Don't you love to get a little lagniappe?

They are called bare root strawberries because they come in a bag with no soil - just the bare roots.  Somehow they survive.  You would think that the roots would dry out, but they come moist and healthy, with a green leaf peeking out near the crown of the plant.

The directions say to unpack the plants and let them re-hydrate in a 5 gallon bucket of rainwater.  That's exactly what we did.

Then we planted them in moistened, loose garden soil.  I'm always surprised in how fast they perk up after being shipped across the country.

Back to the issue of slugs.  We have many gardeners that attend our small country church.  Last year I was lamenting with a kind lady at church about our slug dilemma.  She said, "I've got just the thing for you, Kyle."  Next Sunday at church, she handed me a grocery bag, tied off at the top.  It was heavy.  I'm not exaggerating when I tell you it weighed 5 pounds.  I opened it up and looked at the contents:

A bag of cleaned, crushed eggshells.  She told me that she uses the eggshells to construct a sort of barrier around her strawberries.  "Tell me more," I said.  She instructed me to crush the eggshells up a little bit and "mulch" around each strawberry plant with the eggshells.  The resulting barrier creates a suicidal mission for slugs attempted to feast on our berries.  When the slimy slugs crawl over the eggshells, it cuts up their underbellies, causing them to dry up and die.  A macabre end for the slugs, but if it works, it will result in a more successful strawberry crop.  After a week, our strawberries are green, happy and sporting their first blooms.  Those will translate into berries.  You can see how I've built a sharp slug barrier around the plant.

Here you can see the small strawberry patch and if you look closely, the white dusting around each plant is the eggshell mulch.

I like to try new things.  In a week or so, we'll be able to see if it works.  I'll keep you posted.  While I was reading about this, I learned that if you do the same thing to tomato plants, the eggshells act as slow-release calcium and help combat blossom end rot.  With a full 5 pound bag of eggshells, I had enough to do the same thing around every tomato plant.  

One other thing about strawberries while we're talking, I read on a garden forum that people were having another problem in their strawberry patch - birds.  Pesky birds see the bright red succulent strawberries, and they just can't resist.  They swoop down and peck and the red strawberries and eat them up.  Their solution?  They found round stones in their driveway approximately the same size as strawberries, and they painted the stones bright red.  The birds see the red "strawberries," swoop down, and begin pecking at them.  Except they aren't strawberries, they're red stones.  This hurts the birds beak and they'll quickly give up and leave the strawberries alone..  Now, that's a sneaky trick!  We will update you later, regarding the success with the eggshells and the red painted stones.