This winter, I’ve been growing strawberry plants in containers at our suburban homestead. They have been thriving! This is awesome, but it made me question why I wasn’t seeing similar growth with the strawberry plants at the farm.

One day, I was walking through our new strawberry patch after a day of rain and something told me to pull back the mulch around the plants. OMG – the soil was not draining! It was as if the plants were sitting in containers with no drainage holes. They were DROWNING in the ground! I was devastated.

There was no time to get caught up in my feelings. With more rain forecasted for the two days ahead, I took quick stock of the materials I had on hand, made a Home Depot run, and got to work building a raised bed for the surviving strawberry plants. While rain does make our ground soft enough to break through without breaking shovels (been there, done that), it also makes our compacted clay SUPER heavy, so digging in a “simple” raised bed border was far from easy. Nonetheless, it had to be done. So, I did it.

Then, I waded through the berry pond and gathered any remaining survivors. If a plant showed even the slightest sign of life, I gave it a pep talk and added it to my transplant pile. Unfortunately, a lot of plants didn’t make it, but I’m grateful for the ones that did (even though they looked TERRIBLE).

I tucked my struggle plants into their new bed with a layer of compost and aged pine straw and said some prayers. At that point, I had done all that I could do.

Two weeks later, not only were our berries looking much healthier and happier, but there was lots of new growth. One of the strawberry plants had even FLOWERED – and it’s not even Spring yet! I very much needed this sign of encouragement that my strawberry plants are resilient and gearing up for an abundant season. I’m feeling hopeful that the plants will be back in the hundreds in no time and my sweet berry dreams will come true.