strawberries!

i went out to the garden to do what is becoming the standard saturday morning weeding of the strawberry bed...i pulled back the critter net and went to work with the garden trowel and as i was working i noticed hint of red under one of the plants...sure enough the community garden has produced its very first strawberries...a quick reconnoiter of the other plants with blooms turned up several more nascent ones...so the second fruit of the season has appeared and not a beetle or slug in sight...here's hoping that luck carries on through the summer...since these are ever-bearing plants they should produce a second crop of berries before the summer is through...i am still looking ( and not finding ) stolons that will lead to daughter plants...since these plants put energy into a second flowering and crop they do not produce as many runners as traditional strawberries so we will have to be careful and train the stolons for daughter plants to go where we want them to root...not a difficult process, but one that requires some attention to what the plans are doing...more as they pop up.