It is time to plant the Strawberries

It's August.

We are up to our eyeballs with work, picking and packing all your favorite summer fruits and veggies.  

But at the same time we are thinking about next season.

Especially next strawberry season. 

Strawberry plants reproduce by sending out daughter plants or "shoots."  In June, after we are finished harvesting the juicy berries we go out and cut these "shoots" and put them in cold storage. 

We pull them out of cold storage in the middle of August and plant them to be next years strawberry crop.

The strawberry plants take special care.  This is a propagation bed.  The misters above the plants keep the leaves moist while the shoots grow roots.

 Each shoot or tip is carefully placed in the growing medium. Then we baby them for the next couple weeks.

-they get misted every 10 minutes for 10 seconds during the day
-they have a shade cloth over them for the first day, to help ease the transition
-the ventilation fan runs continuously to help prevent fungal diseases.

All this to get the roots growing.

Look at how much the roots have grown after just one week!

Three more weeks in the greenhouse and they will be ready to move to their new home in the field.

For the number people, 14520 strawberry plants per acre. We are growing 24,000 plants ourselves, (actually 25.500, just in case) and buying an additional 8,000 plants from a supplier for a total of 32,000  strawberry plants on 2.2 acres. High hopes.