Strawberries

Hi y'all,

I found some information on strawberries at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberries. One of the items that sticks out is the fact that you can control the "output" (strawberries or plant runners) by either letting the runners grow, yielding more plants ,or removing the runners and getting more strawberries.

In the garden, 2 of the 3 beds are pretty well stocked with plants while the remaining bed has plenty of room for new ones. Question??? Do we want to start removing the runners from the beds that are saturated with plants and get more fruit? The plants will also also grow taller, suspending the fruit in the air rather than having them lying on the ground.

While picking strawberries, I've noticed that quite a few of the ripe ones that end up lying on the ground suffer from slug molestation. I think the slugs are quite prevalent right now because of the wet conditions.

***John, if you saw a couple of small piles of ripe strawberries in the garden this morning, these were removed by me Sunday morning. They were either overripe and rotting, or have been damaged by slugs or some other pest.***


Observations/Actions:

1) Many of the plants are bearing 3 to 6 very small fruit and several of these fruit are just lying on the ground white as a British tourist. These small fruit, even when they do mature are not very tasty. I've been removing these from the plant to let it focus on new fruit that we can harvest.

2) The taller plants are beginning to yield fruit that is hanging rather than lying on the ground. This will make it a bit harder for the slugs to get at them.

Meeting?

Hey John and Anna, when are you free in the next few days for a meeting? There's lots of activity in the garden, but I can't tell whats getting planted where so I can set up the watering properly. With so may folks working in it, the communication between us all is critical for our optimum success. I'd have a dry erase board that can be put on the fence with plastic over it so we can leave info on it. Wadaya think? Kudos to Roxanne for getting my computer on task to blog. I wont be in the office much over the week end so call me please, Hugs Y"all.

Daya can you hear me?

Hey Daya,

Post a new post and let us know what you are up to...! hee hee

Sprinkler automation

Hello all

I've turned on the sprinkler automation with this program:

Every morning at 9:00am, run inner loop for 11 minutes, then outer loop for 13 minutes. The times are just based on what we used last year, they are easy to adjust.

Every afternoon at 4:00pm, same schedule.

Then there are these modifiers:

Factor sprinkler on times by ((currentTemperature - 70) * 0.01666 ) + 1.0. This increases sprinkler run times above 70, and decreases them below 70.

Don't run a cycle if "raining".

The weather stats are updated every few minutes automatically.

That's it, let me know if anything needs to be changed.

Hello little farmers.....

I'm planning to spend some time early this Sunday evening at the garden. If you know of anything in particular that needs to be done please send me an email ..thanks, kathleen kadair@ecentral.com

more updates

Hello All,

Nice rain we had on Sunday, huh? I'm sure the plants are loving it. I spoke with John and he has ordered a load of manure to be delivered (and dumped) on the new garden plot - the ideal plan would be to get a small bobcat (jacked up roto-tiller) to turn the manure into the dirt. He is going to ask Andy Mead about the possibility of renting one (that's what we did for the fenced in plot.)

I spoke with Juan (a great guy who has worked for me before in our yard) and he's coming over on Saturday to help us with some yard stuff and possibly dig some trenches in the garden. However, John informed me that he did a lot of that this past weekend! So I'm not sure if Juan will be doing any labor in the garden or not...Anna??

I'm hoping that Anna will make a field trip to Eric's farm when she gets back from her trip (tomorrow I think...)

I am leaving town tomorrow for a few days away at Harbin Hot Springs (poor me) and I'll be back late Sunday night. Andy will be home and he and Daya will be walking the garden sometime this week to get the sprinkler system in order.

Think that's all I know about for now...

Gardening Info

I spoke at length with Eric (our official Grand Poobah of gardening) and he gave me a lot of great information and suggestions. I'm not sure how many people are using the blog (?) so I am sending out this group email to get the info. out. In the future, I would really like to use the blog for this sort of communication. Maybe people could get in the habit of checking it once a week or so (like before the weekend?)

Here is the info in no particular order:

Eric says that manure in the Fall is optimal. That way the manure isn't as strong and has time to mellow. So we should definitely plan on turning our beds over with manure this fall (October?)

He thinks we should just manure our long season crops right now (like the new area that he plowed - and anyplace we are planting corn, tomatoes and potatoes. We should NOT put manure on the lettuces...too fragile a crop.

We should move our broccoli to the other end of the garden from where we planted it last year (may be too late for that??) for pest control. We should move all corn and tomatoes to new beds. Don't worry about moving the other crops.

There is a product called "Chicken Feather Meal" that he has not been able to find locally - we could order it. A 50lb bag costs about $25 and it's an excellent source of nitrogen. We could put a little bit on each plant (he thinks the whole bag would cover the whole garden) and that would take care of our manure needs until fall. I personally like this idea...

As for the starters he has for us...he wants to wait until June 1 to get starters in the ground. Possibly end of May if it stays warm. So that was good info.

As for seeds...he has TONS of seeds. If anyone wants to take a "field trip" to his farm we are welcome to come out and get some seeds for the garden. Bring baggies so we can take them back with us (and maybe post-its/markers to identify the seeds.)

If you want directions to Eric's farm, just let me know in a comment and I'll email them to you...