Inside the Strawberry Patch

OK it's not really a strawberry patch as much as it is a raised bed in the vegetable garden that is overflowing with strawberry plants. A couple years ago I planted the bed with these strawberry plants, I believe there were twelve plants total, and let them grow in the bed. I fertilized after their fruiting was complete with an organic fertilizer and watched as the 12 little strawberry plants became many, many more. Strawberry mother plants create runners that root then become mother plants themselves. They are the ultimate in self-layering plants! In fact I had so many strawberry plants that I've given away over 150 plants this year and can't tell a difference in my garden.  My strawberries are June bearing but I don't know what variety.

I need to cover the strawberries this week with bird netting. The birds are devouring the craneflies right now and are a little distracted but soon they'll notice the bright red berries ripening up in the garden. Then it will be a competition for who gets the strawberries - the birds or Dave's daughters! I can't blame the birds, after all who wouldn't want backyard fresh produce that is chemical free?

A Little Green for St. Patrick's Day!

Since today is St. Patrick's Day and tradition dictates that we do all things green and as Irish as possible here are a few things green from my garden!

We have green in the vegetable garden in the form of sugar snap peas, spinach, and lettuce! Other things haven't come up yet for a visit like the asparagus (which I just planted) and the potatoes. Time and the warm weather coming will give our plantings a growth spurt.

I've mulched lightly around the sugar snap peas with grass clippings for an organic fertilizer (approximate NPK: 4-1-2) and for increased water retention in the soil. 

Little 'Tom Thumb' lettuce is coming up! When it's time to harvest the lettuce these little lettuces will be somewhere between 3-4 inches in diameter. It's a cute little lettuce that kids should love. If you need ideas for a vegetable that will encourage your kids to garden 'Tom Thumb' is a good choice. They can sprinkle it (scatter sow) and watch it grow!

Here comes the spinach! It's growing it's first new sets of leaves since the cotyledons (that's a fancy name for the first leaves the seed sprouts to collect energy).

More lettuce seedlings are coming along. These should be one of my favorite lettuces Rouge D'Hiver. It's a red romaine lettuce with a delicious taste. I know, we said today is for green right? Well the seedlings are green - for now!

How about some extremely green grass! How does this happen so easily and without fertilizers? Through good mowing practices, overseeding in the fall, and allowing the grass clippings to break down where they land. In the fall I overseeded with fescue and rye. The rye grass is an annual and will die off in the heat of summer and supply the soil with more nutrients! Of course it also makes holes in the soil where its root system burrow which has an aeration effect the soil over time. The aeration makes the soil easier for the fescue to grow roots which should enable it to get more water from deeper in the soil! Exciting? Well, I think so!

 

Maybe watching the green grass grow isn't your thing but you have to admit watching things green up and come alive is pretty cool.

And why not take a look at some green in the blue garden shed? We'll start with one of my favorite viburnums a 'Mohawk' Burkwood (Viburnum x burkwoodii). It's a fragrant viburnum that is fairly easy to propagate in the late spring and early summer from greenwood cuttings. It's actually a hybrid of the Korean Spice viburnum (Viburnum carlesii) and Viburnum utile.  I have two in my garden shed that I propagated last year and they are looking fantastic! Follow the link for a picture of our Burkwood Viburnum from last April which I'm hoping will be much more showy this year!

And or some variegated greenery here are some variegated dogwoods! These came from my Tatarian dogwood 'Elegantissima' (Cornus alba). Shrub dogwoods are extremely easy to propagate in the fall. Just take hardwood cuttings from the red stems and stick them in soil in a pot! It just couldn't be much easier.

So there's a bit O' green from St. Patrick's day! Now no pinching - I'm wearing green!

Preparing the Vegetable Garden in Spring

Over the weekend I tackled more prep work in the vegetable garden. I've already planted several things in the raised beds including onions, potatoes, lettuce, and spinach but planting wasn't the main weekend task. One of the things I really didn't like about my vegetable garden is now officially a thing of the past - the grass! In each of my garden layouts I've had issues with a grass pathway down the middle of the garden.  It required me to bring in the mower each week to cut the grass down to walkable heights and I decided that this year I would make things easier in the long run. I laid down pieces of cardboard over the grass and covered them with mulch to completely smother the grass that was still present underneath. Hauling all that mulch into the vegetable garden wasn't fun but the overall time and work involved will be much less in the future.

As I can I'll convert the mulch pathway to either stepping stones, bricks, or a combination of both. Only two things stand in the way of that: money and time. When you have the money you don't have the time and when you have the time you don't have the money! Mulch was the cheapest option even though it will need replaced eventually. Ultimately I'd like to see a steppable ground cover like elfin thyme in between paving stone cracks. We'll see, I might change my mind again!

Hopefully the vegetable garden layout I have planned will be very efficient and allow me much more room for growing vegetables. I've noticed that each year my vegetable garden ideas get bigger and bigger and my allotted garden space hasn't. That means that my vegetable garden must grow! That's a given isn't it? I may need to expand the garden back another 8 feet to allow for more raised beds, or at least some in ground vegetable beds that could house corn or beans.

You may have noticed some randomly shaped paving stones in the picture. Those are broken remains from another project. They work pretty good as paving stones which gave me the idea to randomly add more and more stones as I could to form the walkway through the vegetable garden. I hope to replace the beds on the right and left with larger beds made from stone or concrete blocks. Not the gray cinder block kind but something nicer, like what you would use for a patio or retaining wall project. When the garden is 100% finished (yeah right) I want it to be a feature of my yard that draws the eye.

The long raised bed to the left of the picture is where the potatoes are this year. Carrots and bush beans will make excellent companion plantings for the potato plants. The raised bed to the left only has garlic and cilantro in it right now but will most likely end up with a tomato or two planted there. I'm toying with the idea of a trellis to go over the walkway from the second raised bed to its twin across the pathway. Cucumbers would cover the trellis.