Tiny Farm Experience (Strawberry Field Forever)

Tiny Farm Experience is a great site that is following several Canadian farms over the course of 52 weeks. This is going to be a fun year of learning and exploration from across Canada. Check out Lynn and the other farms at www.tinyfarmexperience.com.

Strawberry Field Forever - www.tinyfarmexperience.com/strawberry-field-forever.      

Gabriola Island, BC ~ On the side to make extra money, I have been taking the odd garden maintenance jobs. My most recent job was to rip out an entire strawberry bed. Best part? I got to keep all the plants I ripped out. As I was already wanting to plant strawberries on my land, this was such a bonus. Out here we can overwinter strawberries just fine. But, because I am not fenced in yet, I protected my new plants with frames built by Steve and netting from Lee Valley.   

I have been reading from my new book, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, by Steve Solomon. He is a garden guru out here in the Pacific Northwest. He has a great complete organic fertilizer recipe that I mixed and used to transplant my strawberries. Here is Steve Solomon’s not-so-secret fertilizer formula:

• 4 parts seed meal or fish meal
• 1 part dolomite lime
• 1 part rock phosphate or 1/2 part bone meal
• 1 part kelp meal