June 2 – It’s A Great Strawberry Year!

The asparagus harvest is over for the season, but the strawberries are coming on in great abundance. We can count on a strawberry crop most years, the biggest threat is a hard freeze after the blooms are open. We were spared that this year and the picking is underway.

Two kinds of strawberries are grown here; June bearing and everbearing. However, the most successful choice to put the most berries on your table is the June bearers, a strawberry that just produces one big crop early in the season. Everbearing strawberries continue to produce sporadic small harvests throughout the season, but during the heat of mid-summer, they just don’t set a crop here that they might in the cooler regions of the country. There are several choice varieties but I keep coming back to planting the old tried and true variety, Sure Crop.

Harvest begins the last week of May and continues for a few weeks. The first berries are the largest. Don’t overwater during harvest to keep the berries from rotting. There is a little black beetle called a sap beetle that can be a problem by boring into overripe fruit. While sevin dust or spray will control sap beetles, I’ve never had the nerve to use it. The better solution is to pick often and close so no overripe fruit accumulates to attract the bug in the first place.

I freeze the berries for delicious winter use in one quart zip loc freezer bags. Toss a half a cup of sugar with one quart of sliced berries, labeling and sealing the bags well to prevent leaking. No matter what fruit I am preparing to freeze, whether strawberries, peaches or cherries, I always use one half cup sugar per quart bag. Then later on as I am using them in various recipes or pies, I know that there is already one half cup sugar in the fruit and take that into consideration in the preparation of the specific recipe.

Just enjoyed this delicious recipe Memorial Day at a neighborhood picnic. Michelle Moore brought this special cake and gave me permission to share it with my readers.

Layered Strawberry Shortcake

Bake a white cake mix as directed on the box in a 9 x 13 cake pan. Immediately after removing the cake from the oven, spread wax paper over the top of the cake and weight it down with a heavy book(s). Cool completely. Remove book and wax paper. Now stir together 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened and one 9 oz. tub of Cool Whip and 1 cup of powdered sugar. Carefully spread this mixture over the cake. Stir together one cup boiling water into a 3 oz package of strawberry jello. Stir in a 1 lb. tub of sweetened frozen strawberries that have been thawed and drained. Or you could use one and one half cups of fresh sweetened strawberries from the garden. Carefully pour this strawberry mixture over the cream cheese layer. Refrigerate until set or over night.

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