Mineral-burned strawberries
When I spread the first
round of minerals on the front garden, my gut feeling was that adding
the trace minerals to the gypsum was a bad idea, and apparently I was
right. Since the trace minerals tended to settle to the bottom of
the wheelbarrow, it was tough to get them spread evenly, and I'm pretty
sure I overdosed certain parts of the garden. Within a week or
two, the overwintering strawberry leaves had turned brown and dried
up. Yikes!
In contrast, the photo
above shows what our strawberry plants should look like at this time of
year. Sure, over-wintered leaves aren't vibrant, but they
shouldn't be dessicated either. I did spread minerals in the area
where this photo was taken, but it was during the second
round when I
carefuly scattered the trace minerals first, then went back over the
ground with gypsum. I'd say the living plants got very mildly
nipped in these regions, but trouble was barely evident within a few
days.
Luckily, the
mineral-burn on the front garden strawberries seems to have only
affected the leaves, not the entire plants. New green leaves are
poking up from the centers, so I hope the damage will be equivalent to
a herd of deer tromping through the garden and eating their fill (which
used to happen regularly in years past --- we still got crops, albeit
smaller ones).
The take-home message is
--- spread trace minerals very carefully. And, while you're at
it, try to pick a dormant season for mineral-spreading, although that's
not really possible in a hard-working garden like ours. Finally,
strawberries are more sensitive to minerals than any of our other
over-winterers (like garlic and herbs) are, so it might be worth
holding off on remineralizing strawberries until you're getting ready
to start a new bed.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Drake --- Strawberry leaves will naturally look sad at this time of year, but that's pretty normal as long as the plants peek back up through as spring progresses. What should be cause for concern is if your leaves look worse than in years past. I can't quite tell from your comment whether that's the case for you or not?
Bill --- That's in essence what we did, only with rain instead of snow. (We get so much rain in the winter that it washes things into the soil quickly.) I think it did help prevent mineral-burn on our other plants, but strawberries seemed less keen.