stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

garlic planted yesterday, hope to finish up turning under the strawberry patch today.

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

Todays more clean up, trim the drive shrubs back, trim limbs from trees hanging down to far hoping they pop up removing the cones and end weight, limbing up some trees and mulchimg leaves.

 

[flowerbug]

got the strawberry patch done in 1&1/2hrs. digging a hole and burying most of the surface debris and weeds is much much faster than getting all of the weeds apart from the old strawberry crowns. the only weeds that went in the bucket for the weed pile were some of the oxalis that was taken out of the pathway and some from in the strawberry patch too that were easy to remove, but i didn't dwell on doing that and also the dandelions and thistles and a few other larger weeds that i thought might be able to resurface from being buried.

feels good to have the exercise and also to have this task crossed off my list (it's been on there for four years or more).

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

You have built Fort Knox around that patch.

 

[Dahlia]

got the strawberry patch done in 1&1/2hrs. digging a hole and burying most of the surface debris and weeds is much much faster than getting all of the weeds apart from the old strawberry crowns. the only weeds that went in the bucket for the weed pile were some of the oxalis that was taken out of the pathway and some from in the strawberry patch too that were easy to remove, but i didn't dwell on doing that and also the dandelions and thistles and a few other larger weeds that i thought might be able to resurface from being buried.

feels good to have the exercise and also to have this task crossed off my list (it's been on there for four years or more).

Is this entire area filled with strawberries!? It's a lovely patch!

 

[flowerbug]

Is this entire area filled with strawberries!? It's a lovely patch!

it is now mostly uneven turned over dirt. most of the strawberry plants and a lot of the weeds are buried. some weeds were taken to the weed pile to turn into humus. if i can get out and take a picture of it now from about the same spot it would be a fun picture to have as a comparison.


a picture from 2010 before it was expanded. you can see the beginning of the strawberry patch as they were planted in corners and later used to fill in the whole area. this was also a picture of some beans that i grew at first before i got into bean collecting and cross-breeding and selecting for new varieties.

years before this i grew cosmos, beets and some butterfly weed (which you can see still growing in there in this picture growing next to and under the soybeans in the middle).

 

[digitS']

A "Before" and ..

a "Before That" photos?

I don't grow strawberries but remember a fairly short time frame for a field that I often drove past. The University of Wisconsin says, "Sustainability is the key word in our discussion and typically, strawberries should be only allowed to produce about 3 crops before rotating out." Seems like they could be a crop requiring quite a bit of work.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

yes, they do need regular care. plan on replacing a row every three years and so rotate through the patch redoing a new row each year and removing an older one. four rows total. i let mine just grow all together and that makes everything harder to keep track of what is going on.

some of the crowns i was turning under were over five inches long and had split multiple times. i.e. they were very old and should have been replaced years ago.

next year i will not let too many existing strawberry plants fill up the area again and instead i'll be planting beans and peas and keeping the oxalis from returning. i'm so fed up with that stuff...

the year after is aimed at starting over completely so i will remove all existing strawberry plants at the end of next year and bury them again along with the garden debris from beans and peas, put down a nice layer of cardboard and mulch and then go back to keeping them in rows instead of letting them go all over each other again. i want to change the mix of strawberry varieties - the main one i was growing has an annoying habit of not finishing the tip of the berry as evenly as i want so i will try to get another to put in. i think Ozarks do ok here. will look into it more when i get closer to that time.

 

[flowerbug]

nice to have some rains last night and today to help water in the garlic i planted the other day and to also help settle the strawberry patch i just turned under. also the moisture will help speed up turning all the garden debris into worm food that i buried in all of the gardens.

when digging the strawberry patch and turning it under i was happy to see all the big fat worms. it is the one garden that is heavily amended with humus from decayed wood chips that were used to cover some black plastic and weed barrier fabric in another garden. it was growing way too many weeds (a sign that your wood chip mulch is now best used in a garden instead of as a mulch ). alas, i moved it with a lot of oxalis weed seeds in it and that has been a constant issue. turning it all under again and starting over is a good first step at getting that space back under control but also i can smother it with cardboard and pine needles if i have to and just keep part of it as a smaller patch until the oxalis seeds are removed from the soil seed bank.

 

[flowerbug]

the day started before dawn, taking out the trash, but after that the sun tried to come out and there were clouds so i took up the camera and got pictures of that and then later on the sun came out from behind some clouds and it was warm enough to go out and take a few while there was sunshine. which means yes i did get the picture of the turned over strawberry patch and all the other garden's i put up, plus the spots where i planted garlic and a few other random pictures.