A year and a half ago, in the Fall of 2008, my strawberry bed was more crabgrass than strawberries. It had served us well for 3 years, but its time had passed. As I spaded the bed, I separated strawberry crowns from wiregrass and stuck them in a 5-gallon bucket of water.
A hundred feet away, I had spread wet newspapers across our rich green lawn and covered them with composted leaves from Boxerwood Gardens -- finely composted, as a friend calls them, "leaf mold." I carried the strawberry crowns over and carefully set 25 or so around the new garden. I figured it was worth a shot. What did I have to lose? If I ordered new plants, they'd start out the same way. Here's what the bed looked like this spring.
And here is what our kitchen table looked like this morning.
Each day, when Karen first steps into the yard, the goats whine and the ducks quack. When she rolls open the turkey barn door, the poults rush toward her, cackling up a storm. These strawberries wanted to be closer, too.
"What's she doing?" asks Virginia.
"Rassling up some mozzarella," I say.
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