Sunday, April 11, 2010

Mercy and Around the Yard

Let me start this Sunday, April 11th post by wishing everyone a Happy Divine Mercy Sunday!
Around the Yard
The very first job I ever had was working on a fruit and vegetable farm, "Amato's Farm". One of the biggest parts of the farm was the pick-your-own strawberry business. Growing and cultivating the strawberries for harvest was a big part of my job. So if there is one thing I can grow with confidence it is strawberries.

Last spring, when Mike and I were itching to plant and landscape our yard I picked up 8 strawberry plants. Mike put together an awesome raised bed for them and I put them in. The first year of a strawberry plant, if left alone, you will get a few strawberries. However, if you pick all the flowers off, the plants produce new plants and they will quadruple the number of plants you have easily.

Last summer with my mom and dad living with us and dad being in the final stages of cancer I wasn't able to train the new plants real well so this year they kind of took over the strawberry patch! We will have LOTS of strawberries this year for sure!
You can see there are a couple of bald spots in the raised bed where we had put a tomato plant and a basil plant last year.

After this year's harvest I will have to thin the plants out and replant them. Mike will expand the raised bed to make more room. Promise to post again during the harvest!


2 comments:

  1. We had strawberries in the yard too. Steve got a heap this past summer and mainly made Strawberry jam with them. I think we still have a couple of pounds in the freezer.

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  2. I pray we end up with enough to freeze or turn into jam! If not this year maybe next!

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