We’ve tried to grow strawberries for the last several years and never had any luck. The most we ever grew was a handful over the entire growing season.
Year before last we decided to try using one of our raised beds for the strawberries. The first ones I planted all died. That was the summer we were so dry.
The next planting thrived and have produced strawberries this spring. We still don’t have bookoos of strawberries, but we sure have more than we’ve ever grown before.
Most of the sweet red berries have been eaten by Ira. He knows where they are and makes a bee line for them. We end up standing there while he eats till all the ripest ones are gone 🙂
A month or so ago when I visited Mr. Johnny Mason he told me about a bank up the road a ways that used to be covered in wild strawberries. He said ever year him and his sister picked them and their mother made delicious things to eat with the berries.
I asked him if he thought there still might be some growing in that area. Johnny said “No they’ve been gone for years.”
But I could see the taste, the color of the small berries, and even the very picking of them was still fresh and sharp in his mind, as if it was only yesterday that he was a boy running up the road with his bucket of strawberries knowing his entire family would enjoy them.
Last night’s video: We Made Sausage and It’s DELICIOUS!
Tipper
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I am also working very hard at making 2026 the year of successful strawberry growing.
I bought a bunch of different varieties and planted some in the ground, some in grow bags and some in pots. I also planted some everbearing and June harvest berries. I am determined.
May God rain down blessings of an abundant and extra sweet harvest for all of us.
Amen
While I was in Vietnam in 1967 – 1968, I actually dreamed about strawberry shortcake and of course there was none to be had over there. When I returned home my mother ask me what I want for my first meal and I said all I wanted was a strawberry shortcake. Well, this was getting closer to Halloween than strawberry season. But she lucked out and found frozen strawberry shortcakes at the local Publix grocery store. I was home on leave for 30 days and I’ll bet that I ate at least 5 or 6 of those cakes. Still love them to this day
Thank you for your service!!
We never grew strawberries when I was a kid, but we sure enjoyed picking and eating the wild ones that grew along the sides of the railroad tracks. Mama would use them to add to homemade ice cream and she made the best strawberry shortcake ever. She added the strawberries right in the cake. It came out kind of dense, but oh so delicious with a dollop of cool whip. My daughter’s husband dug her up a small garden for Mother’s Day. One of the things her daughter really wanted was strawberries, so they planted a couple—even though they are kind of hard to grow. She lives in the suburbs with a small yard—not a lot of room—but she is determined to grow a few things like lettuce, onions and a couple tomato plants. I am proud that she wants to do that.
Tipper and Matt flung a craving on me with those fresh sausage. I love good sausage. We always made our own sausage when I was growing up and would kill a hog each year. We didn’t have a fancy grinder like Tipper, we had a grinder that clamped onto the table and was powered by a kids arm power. I am lucky in that I can buy fresh ground McCall’s sausage each week at their produce stand in Honea Path, SC. I keep some in my freezer at all times. They use an old family recipe and have been doing this for many years. People come from all around to buy their sausage and some area mom and pop restaurants use them for their breakfast sausage. They sell 4 types of sausage, mild, medium, hot and by request extra hot, be real sure you like hot if you request them. Their operation is inspected by the health department or whoever it is that inspects meat markets.
My older sister has lived in the south for over 20 years and she always looks forward to strawberry season in NC and sends photos of the most luscious and red berries! I just don’t think we grow them up here the way you do down there! So sweet that little Ira loves them. Special memories.
About last night’s video: There’s an old expression to the effect of, you lose respect for the process both of sausage making and lawmaking the more you watch it being done, because now you’re seeing what goes into it, and maybe you’d now rather not have seen it.
Your strawberries looked really good! My son gave me everbearing strawberry plants last year for Mother’s Day. They produced strawberries all summer – so good. He took them to his house in the fall and over wintered them in his garden and brought them back this Mother’s Day. The three hanging plants look fantastic and one already had strawberries hanging on it. One strawberry was HUGE, and when I looked at it hanging by my patio this past Wednesday I thought I am going to pick that when I get home this afternoon from Sewing Servants at my church. Well, when I got home and went out to pick it I discovered something at decided to nibble on it from the bottom up. The next day I looked and it was completely gone – I think it was a bird. I’m going to have to pick them soon as they get red before a critter grabs them.
I enjoyed your sausage making also. My parents grew up in MS and had learned how to make sausage with their parents when they were killing their hogs in the fall. I still have the seasoning recipe somewhere:) Yours looked might tasty. I stumbled across True Grits utube sometime ago I think because I enjoyed watching Megan milk her cow and use the milk in making different recipes. Just brought back memories of my Grandmother and Mother who milked cows when they were young. I like to see their farm too. Beautiful!!
I planted strawberries last season bought from the 4H plant sale. like you Tipper I only got a handful, this season I have been harvesting daily. I already have enough to can preserves, with more on the plants and flowers so many flowers
Ira knows what’s good and smart enough to know where those strawberries are! Maybe those plants will keep bearing for for sharing!
Enjoyed the sausage making video last evening. I also watch Appalachian Grit.
Have a great day!
I hope little Ira gets his belly full of the yummy strawberries. The strawberries I grew up eating tasted different than any strawberry I ever bought in a store or farmer’s market. There used to be a huge u-pick farm about five miles from me, but the family stopped growing them when our deer population got so out of control. Rabbits crawled under the protective mesh and ate my beautiful plants before the fruit ever got ripe, so I gave up. The old lady who lived in this house for fifty years said she used to start early in the morning with two five-gallon buckets and pick blackberries all day. She had no vehicle, phone, or gun, just her and her dog. How times have changed! Tons of blackberry vines are still here, as well as a few things Miss Katherine never had to fear, such as bobcats, coyotes, and thugs.
Shirl, when I was youngster my mother, grandparents, two widowed lady neighbors and me would make a day out of picking wild blackberries on our and neighbor’s property A snack would be taken for lunch/dinner to me and we would drink water from any nearby creeks. This was back when neighbors were neighbors, at least in the country, and did not care if you were on their property. I expect my granddaddy checked with these neighbors first to be sure they did not want the blackberries on their property.
We had a couple big patches of strawberries when I was growing up. Always covered them with straw over the winter. I couldn’t wait for those little white blooms to appear—I knew what was next. I was just like little Ira—as soon as they were red my little hands were picking them. Here’s a funny story about strawberries. When mom was pregnant with my brother she went out to the patch and just ate to her heart’s content. She had been horribly sick the first few months and was finally feeling better. That night she felt really sick. When mom felt bad she would lay down and roll back and forth (I do the same). She got to rolling on the bedroom floor and managed to roll under the bed. Daddy ended up taking the bed apart to get her out from under it. I was too little to remember it but I remember daddy laughing and telling the story each spring as the berries ripened. I’ve spent every day of the last 26 years missing her.
We have had good luck growing strawberries in our Greenstalks. I have two dedicated to strawberries and 7 more planted with other garden goodies.
Strawberries also do good in our raised beds, so good that they are overflowing and runners are spreading all around them. We have tried growing them in the ground and they do well for a while but eventually the weeds take over. It’s so much easier to use the raised beds.
One thing I know for sure is it’s a whole lot easier on my back to pick from the Greenstalks than it is for me bending over!
I have so many wild strawberries or plans growing in my yard but they seldom put out berries and when they do the birds beat me to them. that’s OK. they need to eat too. If I plant them I’ll put wire over them , the kind that protects them from birds but bees can get them and try to keep snakes out too.
My aunt used to make vanilla pudding and put it together like a banana pudding with vanilla wafers and meringue on top? My cousin’s and my sisters and I would pick the wild strawberries. So yummy!
I feel your past pain of the inability to grow strawberries. I’ve had a patch for years. Beautiful plants but no more than a dozen berries ever show up and this year??? There wasn’t a blossom on a one. When I get the time and energy I’m going to pull/dig ’em up. I’ll put some winter squash out there and buy my strawberries from the Farmer’s Market. Your “real” sausage looked so good I swear I could taste and smell it just watching the two of you!
Prayers for Norman, Papaw Tony , Little B and all other Acorns in need♡
Since my hair hasn’t fallen out with this round of chemo(started beginning of February) I’m headed in for a trim & highlights later this morning. That’ll be a day brightener plus we had several hours of rain during the night on my freshly planted yarden. It’s going to be a good day!
The most intense strawberry taste I ever experienced was eating a couple of the tiny wild berries I found growing in the Ochoco Mountains of central Oregon in 1970. It put to shame every other berry I have ever eaten, whether grown in a home garden or those huge, tasteless things California exports. God is the Master Gardener!
I’ve never tried growing strawberries, but I think your berries are beautiful! I know you’d like a few more than to nibble-maybe enough for preserves, a pie or what have you, but if I was you, I’d be awful proud of those gorgeous berries. Since you grew them yourself, they’re priceless in health benefits and goodness without pesticides…strawberries in the store are one of the “dirty dozen.” In other words, they’re laden down with bug sprays. If I was a bug, I’d be eating choice sweet berries for certain! lol Tipper, as we all know and have in our lives, there are those special people (usually babies and children) who could eat every tasty nugget we wished for ourselves, but because they’re precious, they could eat it all and we would do without and be satisfied entirely watching their little bright innocent sweet eyes and happy little choppers and expressions of tasteful bliss and joy. It’s just what is older folks do out of pure love and knowing how rough this hard life can be… makes me want to hug and bless and encourage every little child in this world! God knows they need all the pure love and tending over we can give… God bless you all the little ones in your lives you’re blessed to have!!!! Let’s make people great again with love, guidance and teaching them about Jesus Christ and what he did for us. Without him, there’s no making it and there’s no good at all…
That is great! I am glad they are growing for y’all this year! I wish I had fields big enough to grow strawberries and everything else too : )
I have never had any luck growing strawberries. Commercial growers will plant them in the fall of the year and have bookoos of them in the spring for a couple of months and then plow them up. For many years when I was a lot younger my family and grandparents each had a grassy strawberry patch that would come back up and produce each year. As for Ira eating them, it seemed like my kids would eat about as many as they picked when we would go somewhere to pick them. I would tell them to stop, I some times thought I should pay for another gallon they had ate!
Ah, strawberries. I still remember them both sweet and tart on my tongue as a child. Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries are all ok for humans to eat in moderation. Yum!
my grandmother grew strawberries when I was a child, it was a lot of work, there was a lot of hills,, enjoy your strawberries, have a great day, please pray for my health, I’ve still got dental problems, and I’m having pain in my head, I couldn’t even make the doctor to emergency room investigate it, I’ve asked several doctors about having pictures made, to see what’s causing the pain in my head, they kind of blow me off, the heart doctor said last week I could see the neurologist, it’s been over a week now, still won’t let me make the appointment, with the hospital system, they say I’ve got to wait on the neurologist, God help me in Jesus name, God bless you friends thank you for praying
I’m sorry Norman. I will keep praying!
thank you very much
Good morning Tipper and Acorns. I loved the sausage making and canning video last evening. YAY for strawberries growing in your garden. We had wild strawberries growing all over or property when Daddy and Mama bought the house when he retired from the Army. I was 11 1/2. They were great. They love full sun. I hope Ira gets his fill every day from now on. I love your boys. Spoil them good. Ed got a text from Vanderbilt Meical Center to tell him he is now in their system. His social worker at Johnson City Medical Center called and said she had talked with them and the referral from his PCP never got to them. We are so blessed to have her working for Ed. Ed is also getting funds thru his GoFundMe that I set up so we can pay someone to take us to Vanderbilt and pay for his out-of-pocket expenses like medications. Ballad Health has donated hospital services locally, so he has to pay doctors, NP and techs fees. That is over $5000 right now. The ambulance fee is over $1, 400 but they are letting me pay $10 a month. We are still trying to get legal aid to help him apply for disability. Praise GOD for everyone being so understanding and compassionate towards Ed. He had a rough night again last night. But he is sleeping now because of his medication. I keep everyone here and up Wilson Holler in my prayers. Please keep Ed and me in your prayers. TY all. I love ya.
I will Barbara!!
I cannot recall the last time I saw strawberry plants I thought were native. Many years ago there were some along the edge of the hay field on the way to Grandma’s house. They were in part shade, never produced a lot and were very small as compared to the store ones. But they had a great flavor. I want to think I saw some in and around a stone wall at the Hensley Settlement inside Cumberland Gap National Park at Middlesboro, Ky. If I did, that would have been 40 years or more ago. By the way, there is a plant called a “mock strawberry” that looks like a strawberry and has a little red strawberry-like fruit. But it has no taste. Hadn’t thought that much before about country kids learning a lot about wild – and cultivated – edibles as a common experience but it sure is true.
I have a few strawberry plants from years ago in plastic barrels that continue to try to live. I keep promising them that I’ll find a place to put them in the ground but haven’t. A few runners that spilled out last year were large and beautiful but somehow disappeared this spring. As you say, they want to grow despite my lack of care. I am selling beautiful and tasty strawberries for a local family at their stand for the third year and have learned a little about all the work involved in farming strawberries. They dig up and replant thousands of plants each year. My plants are an example of what you say about plants wanting to grow.
That is great, Tipper! I’m glad you finally got some strawberries to harvest off your own plants. I grew some in big planters and it took a couple of years before they produced, but they were always small. I was still happy as could be and yes, my granddaughter always seem to come visit when they were ripe. Like Ira, she would eat the ripe ones right off the plants. I think I might have gotten to enjoy a few too. Sadly, during last years dry spell I wasn’t able to keep the plants alive. I decided not to plant any more. I hope your strawberry plants continue to thrive to produce more sweet strawberries each year.
We’re in a constant battle with the birds, squirrels, and our dog for the best strawberries haha! This seems to be a low year anyhow and we’re just getting a few to eat here and there. I have noticed many new places with blackberries blooming and taken note though so I’m hoping we’ll have a summer filled with picking wild blackberries.
Nothing better than a fresh ripe strawberry! Ira knows what’s good! So good that you let him make those memories. ❤️
Morning everyone. Those strawberries look really good. Our blackberries and grapes are doing really well, but. Our property is home to numerous generations of birds. The berry thieves are the Brown Thrasher or Thrushes, the larger type. Hopefully this year we can get just 1 blackberry. We even have Mulberry trees popping up everywhere, not 1 berry yet. We have 2 baby rabbits that would love some strawberries. Oh, this is for Corie and Katie. Hawks. The other day an enormous, giant, I say black bird circled our yard outside the kitchen window. It then landed in the street and watched our house. 2 days later while making coffee a half hour later than usual, a bald eagle flew down our street. The same day I watched our usual birds flying very high up. Got binoculars and waited. One of the 3 came down circled our yard and flew above me and my son. My son is tall. This bird flies low, no fear. Now that we are paying attention we see ours is the place they circle. They fly over the garage to the back field, over us again and leave. This goes on every couple of hours. They must be after the rabbits. The later after noon bird has wing tips that hang down. He might be a black vulture. One good thing about all these hawks, they don’t eat berries. Anna from Arkansas.
Anna-the girls would love those bird sightings too 🙂
We grew strawberries for years until they quit producing, but now we don’t. If we start growing them again, we may try a raised bed. I would love to find or even start a wild strawberry patch here, but I would be competing with the rabbits and the deer when it comes to picking them for our use. Ugh!
my husband and I watch yall and we enjoy it so much and I have learned so much!! Thank you for all you are showing us ….what is your favorite cook book? or have you written one? I would love to purchase one !
Thank you Jessica! So glad both enjoy what we do! Here’s a cookbook I co-wrote with Jim Casada: https://blindpigandtheacorn.etsy.com/listing/1467868257/celebrating-southern-appalachian-food Other favorites are Moore Than Moonshine by Sidney Saylor Farr and Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine by Joseph E. Dabney 🙂
I had little success growing strawberries, but this year my neighbors said I was supposed to leave them for 3 years to establish. Kind of like asparagus.
I love strawberries. I made Strawberry Sweet Tea for our family girls get-together last Sunday. It’s addictive. I grew up in Sevierville so n a family of ten. We always killed two big hogs and made sausage. We always sealed our jars in grease, rendered our lard, canned our ribs, made Souse meat and pretty much salted down everything else. We never cared for smoked meat. I got negative feedback when I did a video back when by a lady watching me. She told everyone not to follow me that I wasn’t a safe canner. I grew up that way and I am still alive to. I had to stop making videos because of my caring for a disabled daughter and didn’t have the time to devote to it everyday. All I wanted was to help others. Don’t stop Tipper. I hate Matt has tendinitis. So yes, we made our sausage into balls to can and I have one strawberry plant with lots of berries on it, but Lucky planted potatoes in the same container not thinking they would do anything and now they are a couple of feet high. Lol
Aww, picturing Ira eating those strawberries brought back memories of our twin granddaughters doing the same in our patch. They were about the same age as Ira and they would go along the rows and eat until they got a belly ache. I aim to make strawberry freezer jam this weekend.
I really enjoyed the sausage video. We can our sausage the same way. We put up like our parents and grandparents did. They call it rebel canning nowadays but that’s all we ever knowed. I am going to try a ‘new to me’ rebel canning idea with potatoes this year if the Lord allows. You can the potatoes without water in with them. I’ve been watching videos of people doing this and I am going to try a few jars.
There were several yesterday asking for prayer. May the Lord answer each of you and give you comfort and peace. I have a electrical issue in my heart and it was quite scary last year as it got out of rhythm and nothing I did helped. They had to stop my heart to get it back in rhythm. I don’t have a-fib but my momma and most of her sisters did. They call mine supra ventricular tachycardia. Jeff, I pray they can help your mother. It does make a body awful tired from these events. The doctor said it’s exhausting because it’s like you’ve run a long race.
May the Lord bless each of you!
We have another truck coming today full of perennials so we gotta get going early. Have a beautiful day!