Yea, verily, I have reaped the bounty from my garden, and it is
three strawberries. Three very yummy strawberries.
It’s not much, and we picked them a little early because we were
so excited.
Yea, verily, I have reaped the bounty from my garden, and it is three strawberries. Three very yummy strawberries.
It’s not much, and we picked them a little early because we were so excited. They didn’t even arrive at the same time, but we grew them, and that’s the important part. The only bummer about them not ripening at the same time is my boyfriend and I had to split one rather small strawberry each time we picked one. And that’s not very satisfying.
All this, plus the demise of one of our strawberry plants, has led me to the conclusion that if one hopes for big baskets full of berries, one has to plant a lot of strawberry plants. I mean a lot.
We planted six, have five now, and only three have strawberries on them so far.
Based on complex mathematical extrapolations, to provide the amount of berries needed to feed two people satisfactorily, next year I should plant roughly the entire garden with strawberry plants, and possibly even a portion of the lawn.
As pulling up the lawn to plant strawberries will likely be frowned upon by my boyfriend, landlady and dog, to fulfill our strawberry needs, I’m considering forgoing the squash plants altogether next year. Instead of planting eight tomato plants like we managed to do this year, I think we could plant, say, three, and fill the extra space with strawberries.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We still have this year’s garden, that, minus a cucumber, red bell pepper and strawberry plant, is doing pretty well.
My threats against the lives of the snails that were devouring my plants seem to have had some effect, and aphids only seem to be attacking the tomato plant in a container.
But we keep that under control with a weekly aphid seek-and-destroy mission, and the plant’s actually got some little green tomatoes on it.
Something, however, is feasting on our basil, and one scraggly plant looks like it might not last the week. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. A basil is a terrible thing to lose.
Other plants are doing well, too. Earlier this spring, after setting all our baby plants into the ground, which didn’t take too long because we have a fairly small plot, my boyfriend and I were bitten by the planting bug, and we just kept going. We planted seeds from last year’s packets in four containers, and kind of went overboard, shoving seeds in willy-nilly, as we had very little success last year and weren’t expecting anything to grow this year either.
I don’t know what we’ve done differently, or which planets have aligned to support our cause, but this year, almost everything grew. And now we have no idea what we planted in each container.
We think there’s eggplant and watermelon and bush beans, and there’s a plant that looks an awful lot like lettuce. But that’s about it. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll let you know.
If you have questions, comments or tips to share with readers, send them in to cv*****@**********rs.com or call Colleen at (408) 842-9505.
