It's Strawberry Time!!















It's been a cool spring, but the strawberries are making themselves known now! I find the sweetness to be lackluster and am hoping with warmer temperatures this will be remedied. We don't have a huge patch, 11 rows all about 500 ft long, but they are healthy and look like they are going to kick out a lot of berries for the retail markets! We grew two varieties that were planted last year. You can go back in our blog and view pictures of our men planting the strawberries in 2008. I've also posted an 'irrigation picture'. Berries need water, so we fired our guns and will water when they need it. We did not take ONE PIPE out last year at all for any crop! Lots of rain!! Set up this year was nasty, as we had to check each pipe for animals before hooking together. (I've dealt with skunk in the pipes before and it's not fun!!) Our strawberry varieties are not super huge, average sweetness and pretty good shelf life. (Meaning we won't be selling the tiny mushy super sweet ones which a lot of folks assume are the norm on an organic farm. This pissed me off a bit, as I want some tiny mushy super sweet ones!!! Great for jam!! I'll be putting the plants in this year for 2010 for super sweet mushers!) Anyhow, that aside, the ripe ones I've been sampling are fabulous, so they will not disappoint! There are 3 main determining factors for the best strawberries: the variety, good soil and good weather. We have excellent, healthy soil, good varieties and the weather is so-so. They will be just fine! Come to market all next week and find out for yourself! Ben will be running Riverdale on Tuesday, Dufferin on Thursday and we'll be pulling 3 markets on Saturday all over downtown T.O. - Withrow Park (south of the Big Carrot), Evergreen's Brickworks and Wychwood's Green Barn market...

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