12:33 PM Fri, Jun 15, 2007 | Permalink
Rudolph A. Hempe  Email
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The late John Eccleston of North Kingstown, a Narragansett Electric employee who loved to garden, showed me his unique method of growing strawberries many years ago.
He gathered good-sized rocks, 8-10 inches in diameter roughly, and arranged them touching one another in the bed after it was prepared. In short, the whole strawberry bed was almost literally "paved" with rocks. His bed was probably 6 feet wide and 20 feet long.
Then he planted the strawberry plants in the voids between the rocks. After the plants take root they send out stolons which grow over the rocks. This method has a number of advantages.
1. The "pavement" of rocks greatly reduces the area where weeds can grow.
2.The fruit never touches the ground because the stolons grow across the rocks, thus reducing attacks by ants.
3. The rocks heat up during the day and give off heat at night so the strawberries ripen faster.
I tried this method in the first Master Gardener Demonstration Vegetable Garden at URI several years ago and the system worked like a charm. We got strawberries two weeks earlier than nearby farms.
If you have good-sized rocks in or near your garden, don't just curse them, utilize them. Tomato plants planted next to a stone or masonry wall, for example, will produce fruit much earlier because the rocks heat up during the day and give off heat at night. Tomatoes love warm nighttime temperatures.
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Rudy, I will add rocks (I have plenty of 'em) on top of my mulch hills ASAP!
One other question, from this beginning strawberry gardener: I have fruit this year for first time. But some pesky critter has pecked at some of the berries.
Have any suggestions for protecting them?
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Netting works. Cheap enough.
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