I picked our first pint plus of strawberries this morning. Even though most are ripe, I usually have to pick them before they are totally deep red or else the birds get there first. The berries with a little white on them will ripen just fine in the house. I could cover the berry beds with agricultural fabric, but that is too much work. I’ve already got my sweet potatoes, peas, and peppers covered to keep the deer from eating them and I’ll have to cover my cole crops when I get them in the ground to keep off the cabbage moths and flea beetles. If I had nothing but time, I’d cover the strawberries, too.
Anyway, these berries are sweet and delicious and totally unlike the huge, tasteless, Styrofoam®-like Frankenberries that come from California and Mexico though the corporate food pipeline.