local jays have been enjoying my semi ripe strawberries for a few weeks now. they like to pull them off the plant, place them on a nearby rock, take a single bite, and move on with their life.

I've got strawberries...:)

I've got wonderful strawberries, tucked safely under a big piece of bird netting. About 20% are rotten, thanks to our ten months of rain. But the good ones are really good, and there are plenty more on the way. Slug bait helps too. A mulch of wood chips or doug fir bark will minimize rotting.

Do green ones count? I have lots of green, but only have 2 with a blush of color.

Couldn't wait for them, so made a trip to Carpinito's in Kent to buy a $11.95 flat along with $1 pound stalks of rhubarb as I could only get 2 cups from 2nd picking of rhubarb here.

My variety produces early, but thin stalks despite lots of horse manure in fall, rabbit manure this spring, & mulch. Small crowns were planted in fall 2009, so they're young yet, but I'm sure part sun location & fir tree roots doesn't help.

Jealous that my dad has 2" thick stalks with huge leaves that when we picked were taller than 2 year old great-grandson & were umbrellas for 6 1/2 year old great-granddaughter. He didn't even add any fertilizer, compost, or manure last fall or this spring and had moved a small crown to this current location a few years ago.

Used 1 pint for strawberry-rhubarb pie & another for str-rhu-vanilla sauce. Will most fresh & freeze some for smoothies.

Strawberry flavor was a bit watery probably due to the rains I guess. I sure hope our home grown everbearing strawberries are good this year even if quite late. That intense sweet & juicy flavor is why we bother to maintain a large strawberry patch along with attempts at deer proofing...

Corrine

I was surprised to see ripe berries and harvested the first dozen tasty bright red strawberries yesterday here north of Seattle. Put in the Hood plants 3 years ago but got distracted and have largely ignored them for this past year. The patch is in full sun and has a lot of clover and weeds and is not otherwise fertilized or mulched. (and obviously I haven't needed to water.) Delicious!

I just planted a bed of day-neutral strawberries in April...a little late but there are quite a few (green) berries on them now. And runners. Should I let the runners go or cut them back this year?

Paul, if you are taking good care of the plants, just let them do their thing. Keep them weeded, fertilized, and watered. Mulching with bark helps to control the weeds. Control slugs.

Now we have ripe berries that have great flavor as usual here.

Teeny tiny slugs have found them, too. Need to spread more sluggo & do a sweep with ammonia water.

I picked three ripe strawberries yesterday. They weren't very sweet though.