Some bad news and some good news Elizabeth!

With Elizabeth sunning herself back in the UK, I have to transmit some bad news...

Our first strawberry that I have been waiting to ripen. Well...

It is rotten...

The further bad news or is it good!!! The rest of 2 tonnes is starting to ripen... It is a case of Yum Yum and Ohhhh Noooo.

We are still eating last years frozen ones... Anyone want to make some jam, we have plenty of frozen strawberries and you are most welcome to them.

The good news on the other hand is we have our first 'accidental' new potatoes.

These two plants are from last years planting, along with several others which I have dug up and moved.

But to my surprise when I dug the one furthest away to move it...

Just enough new potatoes to have with my salmon for tonight's meal. Interestingly the other plant had nothing bigger than a pin head. That one was moved, if they make anything it will be a bonus...

Event!!
The Grande Vente Emmaus, at Chatellerault is on next weekend 16,17 & 18 May held as usual in the Parc d'Expo. See you there...

Is there such a thing as Too Many Strawberries?

For some time now we have been bemoaning the fact that the fifty six poplars lining three sides of the garden sap up all the goodness out of the soil. The potager certainly suffers.

One plant seems completely oblivious to this...

The strawberries have done us proud each year (and here!) and this year looks set to break all records.

Already one or two of the fruits are beginning to show colour..

We have some decent sized strawberries on many of the plants..

and all have a good number of fruits forming....

The only problem is that we have lots of them...

That's about two thirds of the total plants.. Perhaps I planted too many....

Maybe we should put up a "Pick Your Own" sign in a couple of weeks? It's either that, or live off jam for the rest of the year!

NB. We constantly remind ourselves that these all came from six plants we got free in 2009 from Homebase, in the UK. Now that's good value!

Defending the Potager

We are losing a fair bit of fruit to our feathered friends at the moment and considering how well fed they have been all winter we don't feel they're playing fair.

So... Battle plans have been put into place and the potager is now protected - as best we can

The strawberry beds are worst hit. Our aim is to limit damage like this....

And get more fruit like this..

We are trying several methods to protect the fruit. The area in the background of the photo (below) is netted using cane hoops and strawberry netting (Colin's ingenious method of attaching the canes with a length of hose pipe came into play here) The plants in the foreground have an apex of netting secured on a central row of canes...

On the other side of the potager a further strawberry bed has hoops over it with supermarket shopping bags attached to create noise and movement in the breeze.

Will any be effective? We shall have to wait and see!

But when we look at the number of strawberry plants we've got we can't help but wondering "Will we miss a few?"

Strawberry Fields Forever...

Having been away for just over a week, we arrived back yesterday to be met with a garden gone mad! The lawn was like a meadow, the weeds were knee high and the soft fruit, salads and vegetables in the potager looked amazing!

Today, whilst Colin took the lawn to task, I've started work on the strawberry patch, which has grown from just six free plants from the UK and ten French plants which were given us as a gift. By planting up the runners last year, we now have well over 100 plants.

The netting cage Colin made for the strawberries has been a huge success producing a bumper crop without a  nibbled fruit in sight...

I've picked fourteen pounds of the beauties today and prepared some of them for dry freezing by washing and drying them, setting them out on a tray and then sprinkling with sugar ready to put in the freezer.

These are some I prepared earlier...

And of course there are plenty more where they came from..

So it's strawberries with everything from now on! We'll be enjoying some to end our anniversary meal this evening!