GARDEN + GARDENING + GARDEN DESIGN + GARDENING TIPS & ADVICE

Now that we’re into the month of June, it’s time to pay close attention to your strawberry patch. June Bearing varieties of strawberry plants will produce fruit quickly as the summer days grow longer and warmer. Just over a week ago I began to notice that the heads of the flowers on my strawberry plants had turned over and small green fruit was beginning to grow. The berries have matured quickly, and this past weekend I picked my first basket full.

I’m watching my little patch daily and picking the strawberries that are big enough and ripe enough. To pick strawberries, you should grab the stem partway up and snap off the berry leaving the green leafy cap and a short stem attached to the berry. Leave the half red and half white berries on the plant for a follow up picking – as I said before, now that it’s June, it’s time to start making visits to your strawberry patch at least every other day.

The fresh strawberries can now be stored in the refrigerator for fresh eating, or cut and washed for storage in the freezer. Frozen strawberries make a great addition to your breakfast shake, or can be accumulated in the freezer until you have enough to make some homemade strawberry jam. Stay tuned for next week’s post for a fast and easy way to make great strawberry freezer jam.

• Strawberry Varieties For Container Gardening
• Storing your strawberries
• WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR LAWN IN SUMMER HEAT

This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Gardening General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.