Our efforts for our winter/spring 2012 strawberries began back in late August preparing the soil via making raised beds as shown below.
Strawberries like moist soil, but require good aeration. Raised beds provide a good environment for strong root development.
We follow the raised beds with a mulch layer as shown above. The mulch layer lays the irrigation drip tape, immediately followed by the mulch. The black mulch provides warmth to the soil in the winter, as well as prevents competing weeds from growing. Weeds not only compete for soil nutrients, but also can harbor bad insects. During dry conditions, the mulch helps prevent soil evaporation.
Drip tape laid across the bed center (black strip in bed center) provides
an efficient method of trickle irrigation.
Irrigation drip tape connected to a central "header pipe," located at the end of a raised bed, provides the water flow to all beds.
Looking pretty bad huh? Not to worry! These strawberry plants are fresh dug roots from Quebec and have traveled here to Texas via refrigerated truck. They will likely loose their leaves, but once the roots re-establish, they will generate new life and hopefully create flowers that will turn into strawberries.
Once the roots are transplanted, they require both drip irrigation as well as overhead sprinklers to protect them from the hot October sun here in Texas.
Our strawberry plantings basking in the sun on a cold November morning. They still need a few weeks to really get growing, but the recent rains have been very beneficial to giving them a good start.
These strawberry plants were planted in August with the hope of December berries. We planted them under the shade cloth of one of our greenhouses.
Yes we get an occasional strawberry or two, but it seems as the plants are just waking up from their dormancy. Our strawberry grower friends over in Louisiana, tell us to get ready as they should be good bearers of fruit come January. Dang we hope so!
Ice droplets on our broccoli plant leaves this morning.Not to worry they can handle the cold.
Cold hardy Fennel bulbs welcoming the warm morning sun after a frosty morning. Notice they too are growing next to their drip tape irrigation source. Just knowing that this fennel will find itself in some tasty stews or potatoes come this winter.
So what happens when it gets really cold? Row cover my freinds.
More to come.......
