Posted on 6 Comments

Strawberry thief

Remember when I planted the strawberries?  I was very excited to have a blossom on the plant already.  Well, it ended up being the only blossom I got, but it survived and produced one lovely strawberry:

365 day 147 - The entire harvest

I took that photo Friday morning, figured I’d give it one more day to ripen, and then pick it on Saturday.  Only some thief-in-the-night creature made off with it before I could do so!

The entire harvest

I had put the planter on top of a table, to help deter such thefts, but I guess I underestimated the resolve of the hungry neighborhood critter contingent.

So much for getting to taste my own first home-grown strawberry!  I hope it was delicious.

I’m considering moving the planter back inside.  Think it’s too late for it to bloom again?  I know next to nothing about this kind of thing…

In the meantime, I have no problem swinging by the local farm for my strawberries.  Always nice to say hello to the chickens and see what other yummy goods I can pick up while I’m there!

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Posted on 6 Comments

6 thoughts on “Strawberry thief

  1. I have never had luck with a strawberry pot for the same reason. This year, I purchased a pre-planted hanging strawberry basket from the Rutgers gardens plant sale, and hung it from my tallest shepherd’s hook. I have some teeny tiny berries on there, but it looks like there are a few less every day. Birds, maybe? I’m thinking of going out with some shiny metallic pom pom ribbons I found and tying them to the pot and the hook to try to deter them.

    If there are no buds by now, you probably won’t get any more.

    BTW I tried the mass-market strawberry hanging bag thing last year and it was a disaster. The bag was so heavy I had to tie the hook to my deck, and my hubby discovered that the weight was actually causing the deck railing to pull away. At least the pot, this year, is not quite so heavy and hangs much nicer.

  2. I think it’s possible you’ll still get more blooms. Personally I’d leave it outside but build or devise some kind of netting option around it, to keep the birds/squirrels/etc away from it. For instance, tomato cage turned upside down, covered in netting. Yeah, it’s ugly, but, you can easily take it off when you have dinner parties or whatever. 🙂

  3. Do you still have the tag?
    Do you remember if it said “June-bearing” or “Ever-bearing” or “Day-neutral?” If it’s either of the latter, you’ll get more berries.
    Of course, to get the most berries, you pluck off every single bloom the first year to get better crops in the subsequent few years, but that can be hard to do…

  4. You should get more fruit (as long as it is “ever-bearing”, but what you need is a bird netting. EVERYTHING thinks strawberries are good (and who can blame them;). Make sure to put the pot in your basement or garage in the winter and you should get more strawberries next year.

    Good luck (we lost our first berry also.

  5. It’s the robins-the sneaky little beggars will steal you blind if you let your guard down. We put strawberry netting over ours just after they start blooming. Make sure you weigh down EVERY edge or the birds can crawl underneath. It’s kind of a pain to lift it off to pick but the lovely strawberries are worth it!

  6. Darn critters!! Good luck on your strawberries. I’ve never successfully had them grow in a pot (although I have a black thumb), but we had them in our garden at our last house. They’d usually blossom more than once.

    On a side note- I do remember leaving a beautiful tomato on a plant to ripen more… then being horrified as I watched a ninja squirrel run, jump, and steal a tomato off of a patio plant years ago. Evil little suckers!

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