If you enjoy gardening and want to grow some delicious summer fruits, try strawberries. Strawberries are among the easiest berries to grow. They are cold-hardy and adaptable, and can be planted in both garden beds and containers.
Every year, I plant a crop of strawberry plants. This season, we have some growing in my vegetable greenhouse - a few are deep red and ready to pick. And last week, my gardeners planted a large bed of strawberries in a patch behind my main greenhouse just next to my garlic. As long as they are planted in a location that gets full sun, they'll thrive and will provide sweet, luscious fruits for several years.
Enjoy these photos.
Summer strawberries are among the most popular fruits here in the United States. I love eating strawberries fresh from the garden or as jams and jellies I make myself. Do you know why it is called a “strawberry”? One theory is that woodland pickers strung them on pieces of straw to carry them to market. Others believe the surface of the fruit looks embedded with bits of straw. Still others think the name comes from the Old English word meaning “to strew,” because the plant’s runners stray in all directions as if strewn on the ground.
These fruits are growing in my vegetable greenhouse. Strawberry is a member of the Rosaceae family and goes by the scientific name of Fragaria x ananassa. Strawberries are native to temperature regions all around the world; however, it was the union of two species native to the Americas that developed into the garden strawberry. Here, one can see a an unripe and a rip fruit. Strawberry fruit ripen from the tip towards the leafy stem end.
Strawberries do not continue to ripen after picking, so it’s good to harvest strawberries without any white or yellow spots. They should also be firm and not soft because those are overripe. And do you know… strawberries have more vitamin-C than oranges? One may think that an orange has the most vitamin-C, but one large sweet red strawberry contains 10.5 mg of vitamin-C, compared to 70 mg of vitamin-C in a medium-sized orange.
Strawberry is an herbaceous perennial. The plant has a short stem and trifoliate leaves which form a crown close to the ground.
I decided to plant this season’s strawberry patch in a new location behind my main greenhouse. Strawberries prefer to be in full sun, and well-drained, well-established, nutrient-rich soil. The area was already cleared of any rocks, weeds and other debris, tilled, and fed.
The strawberries will be adjacent to our crop of garlic, which is growing so nicely this year.
First, Brian sets up the twine, to make sure everything is lined up straight and perfect.
We have several different strawberry varieties, so we measured the bed and calculate how many rows would accommodate the plants.
Fortunately, there is room for about 100-plants in each long row.
Using a heart shaped hoe, Brian starts by digging shallow trenches. Heart shaped hand hoes are great to use for getting under the soil to make these furrows or to weed.
The trenches should be large enough to accommodate the roots without bending them. Strawberries also need slightly acidic soil with a pH between 5.5 and 6.8.
Many varieties of strawberries send out numerous runners throughout the season and fill in the space between plants, so it’s important to give them ample room – these trenches are a foot apart.
These are bare-root strawberry plants that have been placed in water until ready to plant.
Bare-roots are plants without any soil around them, which makes the plants easier to handle. These are also lower in cost than potted strawberry plants. Brian starts by carefully separating the plants and placing each one where it will be planted.
Strawberry plants can be planted about six inches apart.
Brian splays the roots, so they remain straight.
Planting strawberries at the right depth is important – if the crown is buried, the plant could easily rot. Be sure to plant dormant strawberry transplants in spring as soon as the soil is warm enough to garden.
Once the plant is at its proper depth, Brian backfills and tamps down lightly to ensure good contact with the soil.
The varieties we planted include ‘Jewel,’ ‘Galletta,’ ‘AC Valley Sunset,’ ‘Earliglow,’ ‘Sparkle,’ and ‘Honeoye.’
Here, one can see that they are planted properly – the crown of every plant is even with the soil line.
Finally, the bed is given a good drink of water. I am sure these strawberries will thrive here and, once established, produce lots of flavorful sweet summertime fruits. I can taste them now, can’t you?
If you're headed to Las Vegas soon, be sure to make your reservations at The Bedford by Martha Stewart, my first-ever restaurant located at Paris Las Vegas - we've received so many excellent responses to our menu and our food.
The 194-seat dining destination was inspired by my own 1925 farmhouse in Westchester, New York. The menu features French-inspired cuisine along with some of my own favorite recipes - all with the freshest, locally sourced ingredients. Not long ago, I traveled to Nevada for a brief visit to see how it was doing and to taste some new and delicious items for upcoming menus.
Enjoy these photos.
I opened The Bedford by Martha Stewart in August 2022 in a partnership with Caesars Entertainment. We all worked hard to make it feel just like my home in Bedford, New York.
All the décor inside and out was inspired by my 1925 farmhouse. If you follow my blog regularly, you may notice a lot of the same colors and design styles.
Here is one of the table settings – complete with a printed “faux bois” decorated menu.
Here I am holding one of the menus in a room painted in, can you guess? Bedford gray of course. The prints on the walls were also inspired by photos decorating the rooms in my own home.
The windows in this area of the dining room look out to Durantrans, or large backlit transparency photos, of my farm. Here is one showing the gorgeous spring azaleas in bloom.
For dinner appetizers, we offer these house made bread baskets. Each one has JuneBug’s garden flatbreads, grape-rosemary focaccia, and warm Parker House rolls.
This is a very popular appetizer. Everyone loves a good warm basket of bread with dinner.
Everything is made fresh right here at the restaurant. Look at this focaccia bread – baked perfectly.
Among the other dinner menu items is our Prime New York Strip Steak with braised leeks and watercress.
Here is our Honey Mustard Glazed Salmon with wilted spinach and confit shallots. So many of the dishes are the same ones I serve to family and friends when I entertain at home.
Here I am with a plate of my mother’s pierogis. Big Martha made the best pierogis.
These are filled with potato and brown butter. If you’re unfamiliar with pierogis, they are filled dumplings made by wrapping unleavened dough around a savory or sweet filling and cooking in boiling water.
Here, the wait staff gathers at the large counter waiting to bring out various dishes. Above are the hanging copper pans in a variety of sizes from my MARTHA by Martha Stewart collection.
At the bar, garnishes are always cut and prepared fresh for our cocktail service.
And of course, we serve Martha’s Chard, and now Martha’s Lighter Chard – both with bright citrus fruit notes and a distinctly sweet, oaky flavor.
During my visit, we hosted some media and hospitality events and shared some of these delicious bites – crab cakes, a spring salad, steak tartare, and red endives with Gorgonzola Dolce, toasted pecans and sherry-shallot vinaigrette.
We also offered Oysters Rockefeller, baked with Pernod cream, spinach watercress, and a parsley breadcrumb topping.
And for dessert, ramekins filled with our Classic Crème Brûlée.
This dessert table was also filled with “Mile High” Chocolate Cake, house made sorbets and ice creams, cookies, and tarts.
Here I am with just some of those who have helped make The Bedford by Martha Stewart such a success. We have a great team at The Bedford. If you haven’t yet joined us for a visit, please make reservations – you’ll have a great time!
Here at my Bedford, New York farm, the garden beds are changing every single day. Trees are leafing out and flowers are bursting with color and energy.
Some of the most beautiful growth is behind my Tenant House and around my gym building. There we've planted Epimediums, trout lilies, mayapples, ferns, Syneilesis, Polygonatum, and other shade-loving specimens.
Enjoy these photos and have a great spring weekend.
Behind my Tenant House and near my gym, I designed lovely gardens of shade-loving plants. This time every year, we see these beds come alive with all the bold foliage. These burgundy trees are Japanese maples. With more than a thousand varieties and cultivars, the iconic Japanese maple tree is among the most versatile small trees for use in the landscape. They look so pretty with all the greenery and blooms surrounding them.
This is a trout lily. Its delicate blooms, which resemble turks cap lilies do best in dappled light.
Syneilesis aconitifolia, commonly called shredded umbrella plant, is an herbaceous perennial of the aster family that is native to hillside forest margins and slopes in China, Korea, Japan and eastern Russia. I am so fond of the foliage. The leaves are narrow, dissected, and cascade downward like an umbrella. Emerging foliage is covered with a unique white fur. White flowers on mauve pink calyxes will tower above the foliage midsummer.
All around, I also have lots of ostrich ferns growing. Matteuccia struthiopteris is native to North America. Once established, these grow to a height of three to six feet. Ostrich fern grows in vase-shaped clumps called crowns. The showy, arching, sterile fronds are plume-like and reminiscent of the tail feathers of – you guessed it – ostriches.
Every April, we see scores of ferns exploding from the ground.
Epimedium, also known as barrenwort, bishop’s hat, fairy wings, horny goat weed, or yin yang huo, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Berberidaceae. The majority of the species are endemic to China, with smaller numbers elsewhere in Asia, and a few in the Mediterranean region. The leaves are made up of leaflets, which can range in number from three to 50 and in size from as tiny to six inches long. They are generally heart-shaped, but can range from round to arrow-shaped.
Sprays of pink, white, yellow, orange, or lavender flowers appear this time of year. And, some Epimedium blossoms look like miniature columbines or tiny daffodils, while others appear more like spiders or stars. Species with long sprays can even resemble orchids.
Podophyllum peltatum is commonly known as mayapple, American mandrake, wild mandrake, and ground lemon. Mayapples are woodland plants, typically growing in colonies from a single root.
I have lots of mayapple growing in the gardens – this large area of mayapple is growing outside my main greenhouse and across from my gym building. The palmately lobed umbrella-like leaves grow up to 16-inches in diameter with three to nine shallowly to deeply cut lobes. The plants produce several stems from a creeping underground rhizome.
Nearby, the Cotinus are leafing out, too. Cotinus, the smoketree, or smoke bush, is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to the sumacs. Their smooth, rounded leaves come in exceptional shades of deep purple, clear pinkish-bronze, yellow, and green.
Astilboides is an interesting plant with huge, bright green leaves that are round and flat and measure up to 24-inches across. The effect is dramatic, and beautiful among other hardy perennials.
Commonly known as The Guinea Hen Flower, The Checkered Lily or The Snake’s Head Fritillary, Fritillaria meleagris is an heirloom species dating back to 1575. It has pendant, bell-shaped, checkered and veined flowers that are either maroon or ivory-white with grass-like foliage intermittently spaced on its slender stems.
The hellebores continue to show beautifully at the farm. Hellebores are members of the Eurasian genus Helleborus – about 20 species of evergreen perennial flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae. They blossom during late winter and early spring for up to three months. Hellebores come in a variety of colors and have rose-like blossoms. It is common to plant them on slopes or in raised beds in order to see their flowers, which tend to nod.
These white hellebores are planted outside my studio. Hellebore foliage is thick, evergreen, and forms a low lying clump with leaves that are lobed and palm-like.
These are Snowflakes – not to be confused with Snowdrops. The Snowflake is a much taller growing bulb which normally has more than one flower per stem. Snowflake petals are even, each with a green spots on the end, whereas Snowdrops have helicopter-like propellers that are green only on the inner petals.
And we still have daffodils bordering the garden beds with bright colors! My daffodil blossoms come in many combinations of yellow, orange, and white.
Here some all-yellow daffodils. I plant early, mid- and late season daffodils to extend the flowering season through spring.
Catnip is a member of the mint family. I grow catnip in a few different areas around the farm. It is an aggressive herb, so it spreads very quickly. Cats love the smell of the essential oil in the plants’ stems and leaves. I dry a big batch of catnip every year for my dear kitties.
Also growing in a nearby bed is phlox. Some flower in spring, others in summer and fall. Flowers may be pale blue, violet, pink, or white.
I hope you’re enjoying all the spring growth around your home and neighborhoods. Share what is blooming where you live in the comments section below.
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