Weeding the strawberry bed. Fertilising and picking sprouting.

Sunday 14th May
Today I planned to spend some time on the plot after the Working Party. That work was pretty exhausting so I planned just to plant the strawberry plants I raised from runners last autumn. However the plants I bought last year had not performed well. The variety Hapil, meant to cope with light soil and dry conditions, only had three plants out of fourteen surviving and Honeoye, for early crops, performed similarly. Mara du Bois has survived and produced a reasonable crop so I hope for better this year. Only Elsanta grows prolifically, producing lots of fruit and runners, hence the plants.
I planned to move the few surviving plants to the (sheltered) end of the bed and start a fresh patch of Elsanta in the space left. However I soon realised I needed to clear the weeds from the bed first. I had just finished that when I got the call to say lunch was served at home so the planting will have to wait.
Before going home I went round with the chicken manure pellets to give some of the growing crops a fillip of fertilizer and picked bunches of sprouting shoots from the kale and curly kale. I even got a good sized bunch from the the purple sprouting plants that I thought were done.