Going vertical with Strawberries

This year's new experiment is an addition to our small side garden - we build new strawberry beds. Yes, we do have plenty of strawberries in the main garden in the front of the house, but I wanted to add few to see how it would work and if any squirrels or other animals will cause problems. So my hubby build it for me on a sunny weekend afternoon and we used our second garden so it's not too visible from main road. It  may not be pretty but it's functional.

We used 4" pipe, he cut out strip and put a small wooden blocks inside to keep sides from closing in. I'm sure there was better way to do this, but I wanted to keep it simple and to have minimum work on his part. He put it on 4-feet supports by the edge of the garden next to the fence. This way it's out of  the way, not shading beds and the main benefit - it's perfect height for him to reach for berries once they start producing. Will keep you updated on how it works. For now transplanted berries need to start growing properly.

Spring is finally here!

Better late than never and spring finally starting to show its face. Some of these beauties normally bloom in March - not end of April, but this year everything is skewed so I'm just happy to see splashes of colors!

Inside the beds veggies also waking up, with Asparagus that got hit by heavy freeze is in the recovery mode, garlic doing very well and rhubarb taking over as usual. Everything needs weeding of course.

On the patio, Lemon and Lime ready to go into bloom - they had hard time inside as it's too dry for them, so they didn't show much growth and shed few leaves. I hop we'll see some citrus ripe for picking by Christmas like last year.

I also bought two new plants - blackberry to add to our back side of the property - we have a "bold" spot where tree was downed by storm so need to fill it up and this would be useful to have. Another one is a new fig that is a replacement of our figs that died off this winter. It went to -18 degrees Fahrenheit and figs can't survive that cold even if we tried wrapping them in rags.

And of course inside the house my seedlings are growing away - these are  my tomato seedlings that are ready to be transplanted into larger containers. They will remain in-house for at least 3 more weeks until it gets to 70 degrees outside in the garden.

I was worried that I planted everything very late, but with Mother Nature  not cooperating this year I'm wondering now if I will have enough time in the garden to actually harvest anything at all. Time will tell.

Preping potatoes for planting

Yes, it is that time of the year again - time to plant potatoes outside! Actually I'm over a month behind on this task thanks to Mother Nature not cooperating with weather. This year I ordered additional potatoes to add to my garden: German Butterball, Kenebec and Gold Rush. I already had Yukon Gold, Purple, French Fingerlings and regular white and I'm still deciding if I want to plant any rose/red potatoes as I'm not a big fan, but my husband really likes them. Here's a short video of my cut up new varieties as well as some of the overwintered and ready to grow plants.

I've had them sitting in my warm laundry room where they get full light to really get them growing fast. You can clearly see difference between newcomers and the ones from last year that I did not keep it the cold cellar and they are really overgrown. But it's fine, they'll be producing just as well as new varieties.

Have you started planting yours?

First greens for the season

First harvest of the year! Ok, not exactly planned it but my seedlings were way overgrown and it's still too cold to plant anything outside - it was only 28 degrees last night, so I trimmed them and made a salad with fresh crisp greens.  It was yummy! Visit Daphne's Dandelions

 to see what others are harvesting!

 Then this Saturday I got my shipment of onions from Jung - this is actually a replacement shipment for original order as first batch was in such a bad condition that I tossed it out and sent an email to the customer service with picture of what I received. Now the replacement came in. So sometimes this week I'll plant half of these into the main garden. The other half will go to the community kitchen garden as donation.

The varieties that I will have this year are: Ailsa Craig, Walla Walla, Red Candy Apple, Copra and White Candy hybrid (this one definitely for the food kitchen garden).

I also cleaned out the beds in small garden now that the ice melted, and seeded radishes, beets and snow peas. Will wait until Friday to do greens, potatoes and regular peas as the soil is way too cold.

So what are you doing in your garden this week?