Strawberry Plants

[Whitewater]

Today at Home Depot we bought two Ozark Beauty plants (which are everbearing, which means we'll get strawberries all summer) and one All Star strawberry plant, which is June bearing, which means in *theory* we'll only get one big crop early on, but last year our 'June-bearing' strawberry plant had berries on it up until Halloween, so all bets are off, LOL!

Then I got a bug up my butt and wound up getting a bargain on Ebay for 12 Honeoye strawberry plants, also supposedly June-bearing, but like I said . . .
anyway, this particular seller is selling them bare-root (no soil or root balls, just the roots) and I won all 12 for the low, low price of $2.49 plus $5.45 shipping. That's 66 cents/plant! What I'm going to do with 15 strawberry plants I don't know. They propagate themselves, you see, by sending out runners. One plant, within three growing seasons, could wind up being 10 plants! And I just haven't got that kind of room in my backyard. All the beds have already been allocated . . . oh wait . . . except one . . .maybe I could put them there. Hrm.

I suppose I could barter the extras to my friends. My dressmaker wants to give me some morning glory seeds, and one of my friends wants to give me some raspberry bushes, I guess I could trade them for strawberry plants! LOL!

All three varieties will survive our harsh winters, and all three are great for canning, eating, jam, pies, and freezing. Supposedly the Ozark Beauty strawberry in particular is great for raw eating, being very sweet.

Man, I am happy as a clam, getting my hands dirty with flowers and herbs and so on. And if I don't manage to kill what I plant, perhaps we'll have a crop after all :)

Once we start to get berries, I'll take pictures!


Whitewater

[ChristineLS]

I'll have you know that there is a terra cotta pot with a strawberry plant as a direct result of your other thread. I'm not getting too optimistic, but you know ;)

[Whitewater]

Good luck with it! Just keep the soil moist (with good drainage) and keep them in the sunniest, most full-sun spot you've got. And don't forget, strawberries are a cumulative kind of plant, their first year you probably won't get many berries. In fact, some places recommend that you pinch off all the flowers (that's what turns into berries) the first year, regardless, so that the plant will grow bigger and have a bigger yield the next year.

I personally can't wait that long :)

I'm so curious to see how it turns out for you!


Whitewater

[Ninedays9]

Check out my gardening thread; I've got some plant pictures which are also a result of your other thread. We got three strawberry plants. They're the June-bearing ones. The nursery didn't have signs up yet with the name, so I'm not sure what they're called if there's more than one name. They are really nice plants, so hopefully they do well! We also got a tomato plant (and a ton of flowers).

Our plans for potato and carrots are called off because we never called the electric company to see where they had lines. But I think I'm ok with that, so far the other plants have been enough work!

I hope you find a place for all your plants! I would have never thought to look on Ebay.

[Whitewater]

I saw your pictures! That's a lot of flowers, but I bet it will make your place look really nice :) Looks like you picked good strawberry plants too.

Oh yeah. Ebay is 'teh evul' for seeds and herbs and plants and flowers and fruits and veggies. They have just about everything under the sun, and it's all cheap! Or, well, relatively cheap. A lot better than the online nurseries, anyway! I could easily have spent $200, $2-3 at a time, last night and wound up with all kinds of plants -- and no room for them :) Would have ruined my budget too! You'll be tempted by Ebay, I promise.

If we didn't have dogs, and if we didn't like to bar-be-que and have our friends over for marshmallows and so on 'round the fire pit, it would be VERY tempting to turn the entire back yard into a fruit/veggie/herb/flower garden. With little gravel paths, and green things on every side.

I am now off to eat a bit of lunch, and then go and dig the strawberry patch. Will take pictures!


Whitewater

[WebLady]

I love strawberries and have been thinking about getting a plant, but I don't really have a place for it. I wonder if you could do strawberries in one of those "topsy turvey" things ;)

[Ninedays9]

I love strawberries and have been thinking about getting a plant, but I don't really have a place for it. I wonder if you could do strawberries in one of those "topsy turvey" things ;)

If you have room in the sun somewhere for a pot, that would work. Ours are in pots, and I'm kinda hoping I can bring them in over the winter and have them next year and beyond.

[MrsGrady08]

Mmmmm. I love strawberries! We bought a few plants the other day and I can't wait for some fresh strawberries. You got a great deal, I wouldn't have passed it up either!

Supposedly the Ozark Beauty strawberry in particular is great for raw eating, being very sweet.
Whitewater

Everything from the Ozarks is sweet!:innocent: (Im from the Ozarks. HAHA)

[Whitewater]

Hee!

Ok, now my biggest issue is keeping the dogs away from the new plants -- they keep stepping on them! Won't be as big a deal when the plants get established, but for now, they need some TLC, and no 45-55lb dogs tramping around!

I also just bought a couple Autumn Bliss raspberry plants from Ebay. We planted some last fall, but I think over the winter the rabbits got them. And I can't see anything like new growth, no leaves or buds or anything, so I think the old plants got killed somehow over the winter. Well. My friend who gave them to me didn't know what variety they were, or anything, she didn't even know if they were going to be black, red, or yellow! So buying a variety with a name will help :) Hope they get here soon! I hope they're big plants, relatively, and not little baby plants.

Speaking of dogs . . . our new dog chewed some of the outer bark off of our year-old apple tree in the back yard over the winter, and now it's really being a slow grower. The other apple tree that we bought at the same time and planted on the same day, except in the front yard, is growing like gangbusters and already has a ton of new leaves. But the one in the back yard, well . . . all I can say is that it's still alive, and green, but the buds haven't even started thinking about putting out leaves yet. Maybe the fact that it's a slightly different species is the culprit? The one in back is a Honeycrisp tree and the one in front is a Golden Delicious (great for pies!).

I know that the Honeycrisp apple tree was specifically designed for our Minnesota weather by the University of MN people, and it didn't shed its leaves until the end of November . . . and the apples on other trees in the neighborhood didn't ripen until just before Halloween, so maybe it's just doing things on a later schedule than our other tree. Who knows?

Tomorrow I'm going to plant some lilies, and the freesia bulbs that I actually bought last year! They're going to line our front walk, along with tulips. And I'm going to plant one of the seed packets I bought for the front of the house, with shade-tolerant flowers.

There's nothing like adding to our curb appeal!


Whitewater

[Whitewater]

Ok, today I cleared out the spot that's going to have the herb garden and planted Dill, Lavender, Sage, and Rosemary. I think there's room for chamomile and oregano too. I planted all of them from seed, so we'll see what happens! The soil was fantastic, absolutely grade A, with a ton of worms and so on, so I am expecting healthy plants.

I also went and bought two raspberry plants from Ebay, so we'll have a total of 4, which ought to be enough to start out with ;) A friend gave us 4 cuttings from her raspberry bushes last fall, but she didn't know what variety they were, and two of them didn't make it through the winter, but the other 2 did. They're teeny weeny little baby raspberry bushes now, not even as tall as my thumb, but they're there! I watered them today to help them grow. When the two plants from Ebay get here, I'll plant them too and with luck, in a few years we'll have a big ol' raspberry patch! I can't wait to have homemade raspberry jam with homemade vanilla crepes. I feel very lucky that some of the cuttings survived the winter! Eventually, we'll have two varieties of raspberry :)

The strawberry plants have so far survived being planted/transplanted. I watered them today because they looked a little dry. I'm hoping that by the end of this week we might start to see flowers, which will mean berries!

Tomorrow, if my body is up to it (I'm starting to feel all this digging . . .) I'll plant the bulb tulips, lilies and freesia that I bought. I'm going to put them in the front yard, along the walk up to the front door. Should be pretty, and smell nice too. I have a bulb digging thing, so it shouldn't be too hard.


Whitewater

[Whitewater]

I saw new leaves/growth on all of the original three plants today, whew! The baby raspberry plants got hammered by the rain today, but I'll bet they will perk up again.

The apple tree in front is growing so fast it might actually produce an apple or two this year! We'll have to wait and see. Still looking forward to apple blossoms.

I didn't get a chance to do any gardening at all today, it was storming and raining off and on all day and too wet. Tomorrow, maybe, though I doubt I'll get to garden what with everything else I have to do.


Whitewater (at least I won't have to water the plants!)

[Ninedays9]

Haha, I was thinking that same thing about watering! I was thrilled with the rain. I can't tell if my strawberry plants are growing at all, but they still look healthy.

[Whitewater]

I got the strawberry plants from Ebay today! Let me tell you, that was some quick work. They shipped -- from upstate New York to Saint Paul MN -- in two days. And I didn't pay for faster shipping, or anything.

The plants themselves look healthy and disease free, and so far I am cautiously optimistic. The plan is to put them in the ground tomorrow, as soon as I finish digging out the rest of their patch.

I am going to buy one of those little pre-made trays (look like ice cube trays, only they're for plants, you see them in nurseries and home improvement stores) and put the plants I don't want in there, so that they will at least have dirt to be in until people take the rest off my hands. I was looking at the patch today and I think I only have room for 5-6 plants, which means I have to find homes for 6 others. Mom wants one, my seamstress will trade me for one, but that leaves 4 more . . .


Whitewater

[Whitewater]

Found homes for all the extra plants, although now whether they'll make it to their new owners is a question, since they got transplant shock pretty bad. But they appear to be coming out of it and perking up, so we'll see.

I'm pretty happy with the plants I got from Ebay, all things considered. One of the raspberry canes that I got budded and leafed out within 24 hours of being planted! The other, however, still looks dead. We'll see. The only thing that saved me from being shocked when I got what appeared to be two dead sticks in the mail was the fact that I know what raspberry canes look like -- and they do look dead, but they're really not dead. You just have to have faith that they'll grow.

Lots of waiting around when you garden, I'm learning! I'm starting to get impatient to see if any of the herbs that I'm trying to grow from seed are going to sprout. It's been one week, so one week more to wait. Most of them germinate in 14 days.

So far the biggest issue I have is that SOMETHING is trying to eat the roots of my new raspberry plants!! Grrrr. I suspect rabbits.

Going to Home Despot today, maybe I can pick up something that will discourage the little buggers.


Whitewater

[Ninedays9]

My sister was telling me that marigolds, I think, deter rabbits and critters.

[Whitewater]

Yeah, but I hate marigolds. . .

Oh well. One of the hazards of having a natural garden, I guess!

Today I cleared a space that's about 3x3 (we have a HUGE patch for a veggie garden, probably 15x5, but it's way overgrown, like a jungle, so I'm working on it one day at a time) and planted the plants that need a lot of space, and probably a stake or two to help them grow up and not along the ground -- one jalepeno pepper plant, one sweet banana pepper plant, and two tomato plants -- one Early Girl and one Bonnie 'Tomato' plant, which I chose because supposedly they have great flavor and can be eaten raw. I chose the Early Girl because I'm planting late (this should have happened a good two weeks ago, only at that time I was passed out on narcotics in a dark room . . . ), and I still want to have tomatoes this season! I don't know how many peppers we're going to get, so we've only got one plant each for now. Same with the tomatoes.

I saw a ton of worms, which is good, means nice healthy soil. We're going to get ripe peppers in 75 days and ripe tomatoes in 50 days, that is, if everything goes well. And in theory we should get strawberries in about 35 days.

Tomorrow I clear out another patch and plant the melon seeds, the early watermelon (55 days) and the early cantelope (an amazing 45 days!).

Then, on Wed I'll clear out yet a third patch and plant the fast growing peas and the zuchinni, both from seeds, and see whether they come up or not.

That is, if it doesn't rain, which they said it might.

I'm discovering that I really enjoy gardening, and that I'm not bothered by worms. At the moment, what I like best is reclaiming the jungle that has grown up in the years of neglect since nobody was living in our house. I like getting down to it and taming the land. I think I would have made a great pioneer!


Whitewater

[Whitewater]

Short update:

The dog killed the Ebay strawberry plants. Not by eating them, but by trampling them. Luckily I still have two that are in containers, so the plan now is to get them growing, and when they're bigger, to put them where the old plants were. After all, because of the way strawberries grow, you really only need one healthy one! And I'll put a short fence around the patch to keep the dog out.

Everything else is stayin' alive. :) Including the tiny jalapeno plant and both raspberry plants, despite the fact that their roots are torn up daily by some small creature. Every day, I go out there to water and I have to cover up the roots again. But they're growing!

And our very slow apple tree has just today produced a leaf! Yay tree! I am hoping for more leaves this summer. I water the tree daily and talk to it encouragingly and we planted a fertilizer stake specifically for trees, so I hope it decides to grow. It's sibling out front has leafed out with a vengance and its blossoms are just a few days from opening. I will take a picture!

Every day, even a few hours after rain, the soil is as dry as though there hadn't been water for weeks. I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't go to a twice-a-day watering schedule.

And I'm also starting to wonder if we're going to get ANY harvest this summer, because everything is growing more slowly than I thought it would and I'm not seeing any signs of actual fruit or veggies. No flowers.

Maybe they need to grow for a while. If I don't start seeing flowers by the wedding, I'll have to have a serious talk with my plants!


Whitewater

[Ninedays9]

What flowers do you have planted? Are there any that have bloomed? My annuals are doing very well... except for the Morning Glories; they hardly look like they've gotten bigger. That stinks about the strawberry plants, but I'm glad you still had a couple plants. I know what you mean about the soil drying up quickly. All the ones I've got in the ground are always very dry before I water them. The potted ones have never dried up, though.

That's exciting about the apple trees. It'd be cool to have one of those. There actually is one in my parents' yard, but we never did anything with the apples because we didn't spray, and there were always bugs that ate the apples.

Gardening is very exciting to me. Every day I go outside and inspect the plants to see if they've done anything new. There's usually at least one new bloom a day, recently. When the strawberry plants start doing stuff I'll be very excited.

[Whitewater]

We haven't got any actual flowers planted . . . Well, unless you count the dandelions, thistles and creeping charlie . . . I meant, for fruits and veggies, you have to have flowers on the plant before they set fruit. Raspberries and strawberries have white flowers, apples have pink and white blossoms, tomatoes and zuchinni have yellow flowers, etc. The flowers either turn into fruits/veggies or they fall off and allow the fruit/veggie to grow in its place.

I have a bunch of bulbs for actual flowers like tulips and lilies, but I've never got around to planting them. Probably ought to do that!

I'm going to eat something, take a shower, and go back outside to take another whack at taming the crazy mess that is the back veggie garden. I am kind of counting on the fact that zuchinni grow regardless, and that nobody, not even a first-time gardener, can kill them. :) So I need to keep clearing the garden, apparently zukes take a LOT of room. So do watermelons, and I'd like to try growing those. My brother (who is also a first time gardener) is growing sugar baby watermelons, so it can't be that hard!

We'll see what happens.


Whitewater (if I do get any fruits or veggies, I'll take pictures!)

[Ninedays9]

Ohhh, I see what you mean now.

[Whitewater]

Lo, I have a Zombie Strawberry Plant. And now, I think I might have two of them. They are the Plants That Would Not Die. Seriously. I thought they were dead, like, till them into the ground to compost dead, as in 'this is an EX PARROT' kind of dead . . . when all of a sudden one day I saw a scraggly little green thing. And a leaf.

Turns out my dead strawberry plants have come back to life, though I'm not sure I want to know how, LOL!

And the green thing is growing. I'll be amazed if the entire plant comes back, just from this one little scraggly green thing.

I have what appears to be a flower that's still all closed up and just thinking about blooming, on my Early Girl tomato plant. The poor plant got 'shocked' by two days of weather in the high 90's (when 24 hours earlier it had been a mere 65') and wilted. It's not dead, but it's definitely wilty. Unlike the generic 'Tomato' plant I bought -- that thing is robustly healthy, if small in stature, and didn't seem as affected by the sudden heat. We'll see if the Early Girl can recover. Otherwise, I'll have to order seeds next year and start the seedlings inside, to get a variety that's just as early (we have a short growing season here in MN -- zone 4a) but more hearty. I chose Early Girl because they produce tomatoes a good month before the other tomato varieties do, and we have a short growing season. But I think I'll have to find another plant that's more sturdy and can handle the weather shifts.

In the meantime I amended the strawberry soil *again* (it's entirely clay, so getting it to the kind of soil that strawberries like will take a lot of time and energy . . .) with the leftover Mushroom Compost that I bought today from HD. I hope the strawberries like that stuff! Most of the bag got worked into the herb garden.

Ahh, my herb garden. It's been three weeks, no sprouts, the seeds I planted are dead. I think. So, I went to HD and bought young plants of all the varieties I wanted -- sage, dill, lavender, rosemary -- and HD had a nice tarragon plant at a decent price, so I got some tarragon too. All the way home my car smelled of compost and French herbs. It was wonderful :) And after I planted them the combination of the dirt and the compost, plus the herbs, smelled divine. I almost forgot -- we have chives too! The chives were here when we bought the house, so I always forget about them because I didn't plant them. But they're growing like gangbusters, and I'm considering trying to take some of them and plant them in the herb garden as well as in their original spot between the slabs of our concrete pathway to the garage . . .

I also picked up a cheap-but-nice looking ten foot long by 18" high little fence thing, to keep the dog out of the herbs. I'm seriously considering getting another one for the strawberries and two more to go along the alley side of the veggie garden . . . once everything starts to actually produce fruit and veggies, I don't want people stealing them! And the garden is actually slap up against a 3" high retaining wall, so with the 18" high fence, the alley wall side of the veggie garden will be 4.5 feet tall, which ought to discourage most folks from just reaching in.

It was only $6 for the fence, and it's an open fence, so the herbs can get sun. $6 for a 10'x18" section of metal, rust-treated fence is a pretty good deal around here.

I will take pictures tomorrow! Now that everything is planted out except for the flowers in the front (that's the next project!), I can take pictures and start to document my first attempt at gardening. Should be interesting.

Oh, and we now have FOUR watermelon sprouts, though one of them isn't doing too well today. All 6 zucchini plants and sprouts are thriving, more or less (two of the sprouts are doing well, two are lagging behind, we'll see what happens), all three pepper plants are doing nicely, and I hope to see cantaloupe spouts by this time next week. Fiance and I dug out the garden, amended the soil, and planted the cantaloupe seeds yesterday. I planted ALL the cantaloupe seeds . . . we'll see how many sprout. Personally I'll be ok with just 4-6 healthy plants!

If I wanted to finish digging out the garden I could plant peas, beets and carrots, and another 1-2 tomato plants (yes, there's THAT much room), but I don't feel like it. Maybe next year.

(Later . . . a lot later . . . )

I forgot I hadn't posted this!

Gives me the chance to say that tonight I actually planted my herb bed, didn't just go and buy the plants. I got some mushroom compost to add to the soil, it's already been amended by some gardener in the long-ago past, but I figured it needed an extra boost of new stuff. Online research didn't seem to be able to come to a consensus about mushroom compost, some said it was terrible, others said it was great. My soil is so poor right now that I suspect anything will help! There was enough compost in a 40lb bag to also do a light tilling (maybe 1" all the way around) of the strawberry patch, like I said -- and there was STILL compost left after that, even, so tomorrow I'm going to go plant it between the tomatoes and the peppers and finally finish the bag. Maybe it will help with the wilty.

Tomorrow I will probably also get a bag of manure and work it into the veggie garden, I suspect that soil is low on nutrients too.

(I keep reminding myself, next year all I'll have to do is weed . . . )


Whitewater

[Ninedays9]

Just wondering if there are any flower on your strawberry plants yet? Mine still don't have any. They are much bigger than originally though; I noticed that with the pictures from before... but there's no sign of any flowers. The tomato plant, on the other hand is half as tall as I am with a few sets of flowers.

[Whitewater]

Nope, no flowers on the strawberries. Lots of green, shiny, happy leaves, but no flowers. I keep getting told that they might not produce at all this year because they're new plants, but I wonder.

Last year our strawberry was in a pot and it was a different variety and we had a dozen strawberries by now!

I keep telling myself that at approximately $15 planting strawberries in the ground was a cheap experiment . . . I'll try to get them to survive the winter, but if not, next summer it's back to container planting for me!


Whitewater

[Ninedays9]

Do you remember what kind of plants you got last year? I may have to get that kind next year. The ones I got said "Great for jam!" on the label I wish it had said "Great for jam (next year)!" I don't think I'm gonna get anything this year since they're June-bearing and have no flowers. :(

[Whitewater]

I hear ya!

I think that I am also going to try to find that specific variety again -- I believe it was called TriStar.

And I'm not going to go to HD again, I asked an employee if they were going to get a certain kind of tomato, and he said 'Well, we get whatever our supplier feels like sending us, we don't have any say' so that didn't make me feel very confident!

I'm going to go to a real greenhouse next year!


Whitewater

[Ninedays9]

You should try Gertens; it's awesome. They had pretty much everything.

[Whitewater]

We have strawberry blossoms! And one strawberry growing, already pretty big, for a growing strawberry. Still in that wierd, yellow-green/puce color, but should be ready just after the wedding.

The blossoms are on one of my Ozark Beauty plants, I'm hoping that the rest of the plants follow shortly. This one plant has a cluster of about a half-dozen strawberry blossoms, it'll be interesting to see just how many strawberries we do get.

And the Zombie Strawberry is doing well, growing nicely. I expect to see berries next year, since it's still so small. That is, if I can keep it alive over the winter!

I am so pleased to see that we're finally getting strawberries :)


Whitewater

[Ninedays9]

I think that might be what's on the plant that I have. It's a yellowish thing that I thought was gonna turn into a flower, but it must be a strawberry. Yay!

[Whitewater]

Well, we have another strawberry flower, so all the blossoms are opening, and apparently they have all been fertilized, yippee!

In other news I finally caged my Generic Tomato Plant (it was taking over) and it's well over 2 feet high right now, and going for 3 feet. The Early Girl had a growth spurt as well and I had to buy it a 36" stake along with the 24" stake that was there originally. So the 24" stake is keeping the bottom happy and upright, and the 36" stake is helping the top of the tomato keep growing 'up' and not 'out'. We now have 5 tomatoes on the Early Girl, two of which were just teeny last night about 10pm, but I went outside about 1:30 today and the newest tomatoes are twice the size of a typical pea. This happened overnight! The very first tomatoes are growing well too, as are the first tomatoes on the GTP.

The mild jalapeno pepper plant is doing well and about to have a round dozen blossoms turn into fruit! The banana pepper isn't far behind. The hot jalapeno, however, is still growing. No flowers yet. I got the two baby pepper plants from my friend, and they really are *babies*. I transplanted them into a 4" peat pot and am going to let them grow for a bit before I try to put them into the garden with the rest of the peppers. One of them is a green bell pepper plant and the other is an unknown hot variety. They're doing well for now, which is nice -- it helps that it's really warm and sunny today! Gives the babies the boost they need.

The raspberry plant did NOT die. Yay! In fact, it's growing new leaves like *crazy* and if this keeps up, we might have a few berries this fall, even, because the two stems that I have (and transplanted about 3 weeks ago) will form a bush by this fall, if they have any say in the matter, and it's the bushes that produce the fruit, not the individual little stems. I planted it by the fence, and I'll be happy if it grows up against the fence, more privacy from our neighbors!

The herbs are doing well. The rosemary is still tiny. If I don't see noticible growth by the time I have to mulch it for winter, I'll buy another one next spring and put it in a container, and then bring it in over the winter, so it can keep growing. It's a slow grower!

The rest of the veggie garden is doing well. The watermelon sprouts are growing and the cantaloupes have their first leaves and the zucchini plants, some of them, will have their first flowers soon.

I can't wait for the end of July -- that's when the garden will be bursting with yummy home-grown veggies and fruit!


Whitewater (still happy about the strawberries!)

[Ninedays9]

Woohoo! My strawberry plant is doing similar things. I'm not sure why the other two aren't doing anything. There might be more sunlight where the one plant is. That is also cool about your vegetable plants.

I should possibly buy a cage for my tomato plant. It's gotta be at least 4 feet tall. It's taller than the stake I tied it up to. I've got probably 5 or 6 tomatoes now... the biggest one is probably the size of a ping pong ball. They're all so cute.

I am also looking forward to when everything is ready to be eaten!

[Whitewater]

Well, while I was off getting married, my All Star strawberry plant decided to set flowers, and they got fertilized, so we'll have more strawberries!

At this point in time, our harvest (if every flower turns into a berry and if none of the wildlife eat them) will be exactly 1 dozen strawberries, from two plants.

Still hoping for more blossoms!


Whitewater