strawberry bed planting

Yesterday, my order of 25 strawberry plants arrived from Park Seed Co. The variety that I purchased is an everbearing (day neutral) type called "Quinalt". I wasn't really expecting to receive the plants this week, so the new frame for the strawberry bed was still empty. Luckily, Lowe's was having a 50% off sale on garden soil today so I was saved. Clearly, this was a gardening emergency, so I took off from work early today. In total, I used 6 cubic feet of Miracle-Gro garden soil and about 2 cubic feat of leaf compost.

I should really get something for these blatant product shots

I tried to space the plants about 6-8 inches apart in all directions, being sure not to bury the crowns. Afterwards, I gave everything a good watering.

As I was cleaning up the driveway, I found about a half dozen earth worms underneath a bag of compost. They looked pretty sad living on a wet concrete slab, so I decided to upgraded their living arrangements.

I can't believe how sad these worms look

The worms seemed much happier in the new strawberry bed. And now they can get to work at aerating the new soil for me. So, everybody made out well in the end.

It's like night and day ... worms don't get much happier than this

I covered up the strawberry bed with some old opaque painting tarps so that the soil will stay moist for a few days and also so that the young plants don't get burned by the sun. Plus, it should keep the soil a little warmer and jump start root system development.

signs of spring

crocus blossoms greeting me

swelling blueberry buds

daylillies emerging

I'm so glad that spring is near.

Tuesday tuber report #4

Ok, I know it's Wednesday, but I was busy yesterday and I didn't want to postpone the TTR for yet another week. Get over it.

The orange sweet potato slips have grown tremendously since my last post about them. It's hard to tell in this picture, but they have really pretty purple highlights at the base of the leaves.

The root growth has also been quite good. It seems like just dropping the potato in the tub of water was much more effective than the toothpick support method that I used with the yellow potato. On that potato, none of the roots are attached to the slips. They're at the other end of the potato.

roots attached to the slips = good

roots not attached to the slips = not useful

The orange sweet potato slips were definitely ready to be planted in soil, so I broke off two slips with good root development. They came off really easily -- just a little snap.

pre-extraction

free at last

I planted two of the slips in one gallon pots with store bought garden soil. The weather is still too unpredictable to plant these guys out, but the soil will enable them to develop even better roots and they'll also get some fertilization.

As for the yellow sweet potato slips, they are growing well but have no roots. So, I snapped off the toothpicks and dropped the whole potato into the pickle jar of water to get some roots growing on these slips.

this guy's going to sweet potato summer school

In other tuber related happenings, the kitty litter pail potato experiment trudges onward and upward. The greens are probably about two to three feet tall now, although they are pretty gangly looking. I'm still working on making a good support system for this container, so there are just paint stirrers in there for now. The plant still appears to have the leaf curling problem, but generally looks good. There was a brief drainage (and over-watering) issue that resulted in some funktastic-smelling water seeping out of the bottom, but that was rectified by two days in the sun, limited watering, and plenty of Febreeze.

I was also excited to discover the first flower bud. Hopefully, it will open ...