How to Do a Stawberry Test
Question from Bonnie:
I heard you say in a speaking engagement that the “Chandler” strawberry is your favorite. Is this correct? I really like Chandler strawberries, too. I decided to plant four types, and compare them. Chandler is hard to find sometimes, but I got some plants this spring.
Answer from Pat:
Yes Chandler is really good. ‘Driscoll Camarillo’ – Patent PP14771 is good too. Chandler is a mid-season type and tastes much better than Sequoia. Camarillo is a later variety and has an excellent flavor also.
It is a fine idea to plant several varieties of strawberry and do a taste test. Also try a timing test, when they bear best. But in general this is not the optimum time to plant strawberries since they need prechilling and certain specific timing in order to bear well. It is best in Southern California to purchase pre-chilled plants and plant during the first week in November. This triggers growth first, followed by a season of fruiting.
If you plant your varieties at various times of year and if some are chilled and others not this won’t count as a fair test in some ways, but nonetheless it would be fun and worth doing but you sort of have to realize it’s like a horse race where some of the horses are handicapped.
See my book in the November chapter (pp.362, 363) for basic explanation of chilling requirements etc. Also my book tells earlier in the year on pp. 251, 282 how to let the runners root and then remove these, throwing the old plants away and how to chill the new bare-rooted plants. This home method of growing one’s own fresh plants every year and pre-chilling them prior to planting, gives a much greater harvest. It triggers vegetative growth at the right time of year, followed by an abundant fruiting season.
Dear Pat,
My mother just joined the gardening club in Temecula the other day and was so impressed with your lecture she has not stopped talking about you. Anyway my question is regarding rotation of crops, I was told to rotate my crops what is best to plant in the place of a crop potatoes and why? Also do you have advice to testing my soil?
Thank you, Deb from Durango Colo.
Regarding potatoes, it would be best to follow potatoes with any crop that is not a root vegetable. A leguminous crop such as bush or pole beans or peas would add nitrogen to the soil but also these crops have none of the diseases that afflict potatoes. This is why they make a good rotation with potatoes. (Inoculate the seeds of beans—for explanation, see page 137 of my book—with rhyzobia in order to increase their ability to make nitrogen.) Corn would also work though corn is a big feeder. You will have to fertilize it well.
Secondly, regarding testing your soil. If you are creating a good organic soil by digging in well-rotted compost twice a year, spring and fall in your area, before and after the planting season and also if you are adding balanced organic fertilizer to the ground to fertilize your crops you will most likely not need to test your soil.
However, soil tests are fun to do. To discover the basic pH of your soil, simply buy a kit at your nursery and follow the directions in the kit, or for a more detailed test, find a company that does soil testing. But by following good garden practices you will create good soil eventually with the correct balance of nutrients for healthy plants. Some plants also tell you by the color of their leaves or flowers whether they have all they need. If there are many blue hydrangeas growing in the ground in your town in spring, the town has acid soil. If pink, the soil is alkaline. Much depends on rainfall. High rainfall means more acid soil. Dry areas are more alkaline.
But in Durango, in Western Colorado where you live, most soils are alkaline and you need to add acid amendments. Soil sulfur is recommended in some books but it has to actually combine with the soil in order to work and this is difficult to do and it is not a permanent fix either. Do not ever add lime to your soil. Gardeners and farmers back east do that to make their acid soils sweeter.( You have sweet soil already and want to make it more sour.) Another point—and this has nothing to do with pH—: Don’t ever add sand to soil in an attempt to lighten it up. That is a very serious error and leads to soil becoming something akin to concrete. In Durango you will need to add many acid organic amendments to the soil to increase the humus content of soil and also lower the pH. Well-rotted bagged wood products can help. Look for these words on bags: “aged”, or “nitrolized” or “well-composted”. Redwood compost is an excellent soil amendment that will also make the soil more acid. Peat moss is acid too but I don’t recommend it any more since it’s not a renewable resource and thus not environmentally responsible to use it.
For an in-depth explanation of soil pH and soil tests see the discussion of soil pH and soil tests on page 20 of my new organic book.