divaqs's Blog

Strawberry Season – Joy or Dread?
Jun 11, 2007 | 9:43 AM PST
Tags: alpine strawberries , everbearing strawberries , junebearing strawberries

Have you ever experienced too much of a good thing? Where something that is normally wonderful and great is taken to such an extreme that you can’t help but start to dread it? For me, this has started happening with strawberries. There is nothing like the fresh taste of strawberries ripened and picked fresh from your own yard, where you know they haven’t been drenched with toxic chemicals, and you’ve been able to allow them to ripen to the ultimate sweetness possible. A really good thing right? The problem with obsessions is that more always seems better.  Strawberry plants make for an easy foundation plant, or just something to stick in any nook or cranny in an edible landscape, so I have them all over. I easily have 300 strawberry plants and probably have a lot more than that, with at least half of them everbearing, meaning I will have a stream of berries calling out to be picked for at least a few months. So now I find myself dreading picking all those berries.

Yesterday I spent about an hour and picked strawberries. The season is still early, so this was a light picking.

In the colander is a mix of strawberries from about 6 different kinds of strawberry plants. We’ve been getting alpine strawberries for at least 3 weeks now, and the June and Everbearing strawberries are starting their season. In the picture the yellow/white strawberries are a kind of alpine strawberry that is supposed to be that color when ripe. They have a kind of citrus-strawberry kind of flavor.

So, what do I do? Do I spend an hour or so every three days picking strawberries for the next few months? If I don’t, I feel guilty for all the great food going to waste, as if my lack of picking contributes to starvation in some unknown location in Africa. Or do I continue to pile more strawberries in freezer bags on top of the ones from last year still in my freezer? With the expectation that sometime in the fall I will thaw most of them out and make jam out of them. The thought is appealing, though surprisingly harvesting is my least favorite part of gardening. From past experience, I know that in the winter I will be kicking myself for letting strawberries go to waste.

Many of you are probably thinking I am nuts to be struggling with this. Who would let sweet red strawberries go to waste?

But I guess I’ve reached a point that I have had too much of a good thing. It might be time to call in the neighbors. Last year I “let” them pick some of the berries in my yard and scored some of the jam they made. It was a sweet arrangement.