Strawberry

We are only a week or two from having loads and loads of strawberries. Our patch is about 3 feet by 15. It was originally started with only three purchased plants. We kept allowing them to branch off and now we have this incredible patch. These strawberries are ever bearing and for most of the summer we pick nearly a quart a day through the first fall frost.

Blog Site - changes and revisions. The site is a little design messy right now. My apologies as I am in the process of changing the standard template. we'll have more space for everything we have planned. Later today we'll ad a few words and photos about our seedlings that we started in March.

Frost advisories for tonight so we had to protect all of our plants with black plastic sheets and bed sheets. Temperatures are predicted to drop to the low 30's tonight. Last night we covered up too as it wasn't predicted, bet we knew it was going to get cold. In the photos you'll notice I've covered up the raspberries draped black plastic over the trellis. Behind the raspberries is our strawberry patch. And the burgundy sheet covers our redskin potatoes. Now most of these plants are okay and run little risk to the frost, but our strawberry plants are loaded with emerging strawberries and flowers. In the past when we let them go we've found that they get damaged so to be safe we cover everything. It takes about 15 minutes and for me I have a quick system in place. The trellis supports the plastic for the raspberries, the strawberries I've pvc white water piping that easily bends into an arch, and the potatoes I used dowel to support the sheet. In the following photo you'll see that I put various planters over the blueberry bushes. It's a bit of work, but great insurance.

Today begins our 2009 garden-blogging season. Our site will follow our garden from May 17 through the late fall of 2009. We'll be posting photos nearly every day of our prizes and our failures. We welcome comments and suggestions. We'll also post tips and comments on the latest and greatest in organic gardening and organic products.

As we're getting this up a little late in the season. I'll give you a quick run down of the garden haps and history. Our garden began as a brainstorm as to what to do with a patch of backyard that had once been occupied by a pool. The pool was one of the popular 18' ring pools. We had trucked in lots of sand for it in order to level the area it was located as well as to soften the pool floor. Anyway, our first struggle was going to be the soil. Under that few inches of sand we have clay, clay, and more clay. We have about six inches of top soil and then clay in the areas outsid of that pool ring. After a bit of research on all the methods of gardening we decided to go with raised beds. Three springs back, 2006?, we began by building out our first section of raised beds. We trucked in 5 cubic yards of clean (no toxic chemicals, pesticides, etc. in the soil) top soil with no clay content. We planted the basic vegetables and had good results.

Three years fast forward and the garden has been a big hit for our family. We eat about 85% of what we harvest and give away the other 15% to friends and family.

In March of this year we started our own seedlings as a trial as to what we could grow in our 59 degree basement with a basic fluorescent shop lamp. Well, we have over 60 tomatoes, 60 broccoli, 20 pepper, 12 cilantro, 18 basil, 12oregano, 36 lettuce, and 6 squash plants. This was just an experiment to see if we could get our own plants started from seeds. We did, but they are a bit small still for being one week from Memorial Day. In West Michigan Memorial Day is traditionally the time when most people will begin planting their gardens and flowers. Frosts and Freeze are minimal and you can feel pretty safe that temperatures won't drop blow 40, although we had two frosts last year after we planted. We'll still purchase plants this year for the raised beds and we'll use our tomato and pepper plants we started in containers. We'll check out our local Farmer's Market for great plants. I've had the best luck and quality with locally grown plants.

This year the garden will contain; strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, lettuce, carrots, radish, spinach, redskin potaotoes, blueskin potatoes, brocolli, green beans, four types of peppers, and at least five different types of tomatoes.

So let the blog grow as we detail the plants and events. We hope you enjoy our garden!

A great book to learn how to maximize your garden production by utilizing a smaller section of your yard and with a lot less work. Mel shows you exactly how to do it all. Step by step instructions and easy to follow plans are through out this book. He even details the best way to make a great garden soil. I highly recommend this book.