It is early June now and the strawberry blossoms are sooooo beautiful!  This picture shows a blossom on the right and a baby strawberry on the left.  See how the strawberry grows from the center of the flower?

For now, we are making sure the strawberry plants don’t dry out or get crowded out by weeds.  If you have grass clippings that are seed-free (just the blades) you are going to be way ahead of me.  My mulch helped, but we still have had to clean out the weeds several times.  Once the strawberry plants are bigger and fill in the bed, they “shade out” the weeds and that helps a ton.

It’s a great idea (and fun) to just check on your plants everyday.  That way you can see if weeds are cropping up and also if insects or animals are harming your plants.  See the insect damage on these leaves?  I’m not sure if that fly had anything to do with it, but something is munching.  It doesn’t look too bad on this plant, but a little plant next to it had been eaten all gone.

I’ll confess.  When it comes to fertilizers, I do cheat.  I fertilize the old fashioned way with manure and compost, but I also add Miracle Grow because my growing season here is really short and I have a big family to feed.  But when it comes to pest control, I do not use chemicals.  You can read up on this, but I believe chemical pesticides are harmful to people, to beneficial insects (yes, many bugs are essential for a healthy garden) and to the environment in general.

Garden’s Alive has been a great resource for me for organic, natural pest control products.  For the strawberries I sprayed “Bull’s Eye”.  It’s made of a natural bacteria.  I’ll keep an eye on things, but I don’t anticipate having to spray Bull’s Eye for at least another week.