I have just had a conversation with Andrew Meier in Australia about strawberries. This year I had the first time strawberry bloom smelling and I wanted to find out, if that has ever occured to somebody else. It is an intense honey smell, with a hint of mature strawberry in the end. Very pleasant. It occured in a 3 year old stand, that I should have culled (didn’t prune the runners, far too dense) but didn’t as I thought I could use it as a living mulch for runner beans.

This bed was mulched with forest edge leaf mould three years ago, and it was bearing ok, but not extraordinarily. But something must have made them happier than usual. I did give them a KNF type foliar in spring, with a bit of boron in it, which seems to make increasingly problems from year to year judging by morphology.

Strawberries are very demanding in terms of b:f. As forest edge plant they want to feel fungi around their roots. I know of tripartite associations in other plants (AM, EM, bacteria), but not of strawberry in particular. So I have no clue if a Johnson Su would offer them the AM fraction by accident (Endospores formed in roots of plant material if not heated too much), it certainly can offer them chitin, which they love a lot.

I think every plant will choose their favorite microbe pet from the buffet, and you could blend a leaf to get the endophytes transferred in a foliar. I have crushed and pureed soy nodules with a kitchen blender to inoculate another bed as I wanted to see, if the y-shape of them tolerates that – it has worked without any problem. Just do not go mad with the speed, so heat does not develop.

I will see about a brix – I do not expect too much, as we currently have temperature oscillations with high amplitudes and the reactor is certainly nutritionally imbalanced, but we see.