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I always thought that it is just good common sense that eating foods that are treated with chemicals can’t be good for you (at all). But according to this article in beyond pesticides daily, eating all-natural strawberries provides more nutrition than those grown with pesticides.
Can other produce be all that different?
We are fortunate to have several of the Napa Valley’s best chefs as personal customers and they all love our berries (currently we raise blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, boysenberries and of course blackberries).
We fertilize these plants using a well composted blend of chicken manure, plant leaves and stems, vegetable waste and earthworm castings. This blend is mixed with some of our organic potting soil and applied several times during the growing season to be sure that our berries have everything they need to fight off pests.
The plants are strong and health so we get better tasting berries. Ask anyone!
Another approach that we use on the ranch is diversifying our plantings so we attract a wide variety of insects.
Those of you who are still reading are probably thinking “Huh?”.
Why on earth would a gardener want to attract bugs when for so many years any sensible gardener has been doing all they can to get rid of those pesky, vegetable and fruit eating bugs?
It makes sense though if you read up on the current thinking that goes something like this: In a well balanced environment all living things will balance each other out. That means, attract the good bugs and they will keep the undesirables from getting out of hand. And, the bugs that maybe we now think of as undesirable will be able to do whatever it is that their true purpose was before all their natural predators were sent packing.
My berry patches are planted in clusters surrounded by many other types of plantings. For ground cover I plant herbs that give off the most heavenly scent as I walk through them to harvest my daily crop.
And as a side benefit (although it may just be my imagination) it seems like my berries have a subtle herbal flavor in the background.
So eat up and enjoy! We will have lots more berries available in the spring.
