GardenDesk

The First Strawberries of the Season - Yum!

Last year, we had trouble with our strawberries because we mulched them early in the spring and the berries stayed too wet and rotted or invited slugs. Since this year's weather has been even wetter, we didn't expect to get strawberries again.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that with the absence of the mulch, our strawberries have done much better!

Strawberry picking is always a family affair, so when my wife saw that some were ready, we got the girls and started picking! Of course not all of the strawberries are ripe yet, but it was fun picking the ones that were ready.

We didn't get a huge amount of these home grown fresh strawberries, but we did pick enough for my daughters favorite breakfast - Strawberry Waffles!

Have a Wonderful Lord's Day!

-Marc

Ripe Tomatoes by June 1st?

One of my goals in the garden this year was to have red ripe tomatoes by June 1st! I planted the seeds on Valentine's Day, potted them up inside multiple times, warmed the outside tomato bed with black plastic, and planted the tomato plants outside in Early April under a clear plastic tent.

June 1st has now come and gone, so its time for an update. Here are some pictures taken on May 31st:

They are not red yet, despite all of my hard work. It was an unseasonably cold May here. Even giving the plants a huge head start did not overcome the weather. I almost lost the plant on the end when we had consecutive nights of 26 degree lows. Notice how much smaller it is then the others.

Even the main season tomatoes that I planted two weeks ago have not grown a bit. I may still be able to beat last year's early tomato mark of June 15th. One thing is for sure - when I do get early ripe tomatoes, there will be a lot of them! Last year I only had two extra early plants. This year I have 12 plants of 5 different varieties. You can track both year's early tomato progress with the early tomato category.

So am I disappointed that I didn't eat organic garden fresh ripe tomatoes yesterday? Not really. The fun is more in the journey than in the destination. There are two reasons that I am not disappointed. The first is that I still will have loads of ripe tomatoes a full month before my friends and neighbors.

The 2nd reason it didn't bother me that I couldn't enjoy red ripe tomatoes from the garden this weekend is because my family enjoyed red ripe strawberries from the garden instead!

The strawberry defense plan worked! nothing got in to eat the berries except the slugs, and now I have a great way to get rid of them too! Stay tuned for a future post about my new SlugsAway Electronic Slug and Snail Fence. It's a crazy little battery-operated electric fence. Weird but it works!

As for now however, I'm going to enjoy the strawberry harvest and hope that the tomatoes are ripe before June 15th.

Happy June everyone!