Spring strawberry clean up

I am not very experienced gardener, especially in growing strawberry.

I am growing everbering and june berring types and I do not have much sun in the garden, which may be the reason I do not have big harvest.



The first type of berries I got was Ozark beauty - and the plants  and 3 years old now.


You can see the plant inself is pretty healthy after the winter. I was covering them with oak leaves.
It was a lit of snow this winter and some of plants did not survive - I see the growing point is rotting and 3-4 plants so I have to remove them.




Last year I planted 3 more bareroot  types - 1. Honeoye
That's how the bed was look like after the winter - plants covered with wood shaving and leaves.

I did not see berries last (the first) summer.

I was also surprised that some of the plants roots are out of the soil.
I checked the plants, removed the old mulch, added compost to the roots and new mulch - wood shaving again.

 The bed after the clean-up.

 Two other types are Tristar and Tribute, everbering types - they were very productive last year.

My experiment was of growing them on the black mulch. I like this idea, no weeds, but I lost 5 plants this winter. The plants were pulled out of the ground and frozen.

The Tristar plants after cleaning.






My absolutely love is alpine strawberry - last year I added to my collection -

Golden Alexandria.
Small plants, with green-yellow leaves and everbering berries with very strong smell!
Not so much but as a treat!

 There is one of the bed under my red currant bushes.

This one is a wild strawberry that was brought from NH forest and overwintered here.

Flowers in a garden - checking new camera options

After almost 6 month as I got a new camera I started to read how to use it :)

Harvest Monday - May 12 2014

The very first alpine strawberry!






I am growing alpines "Golden Alexandria" the first year, I got 25 plants last month, most of them with flowers.



In general - we are starting to eat greens regularly, I mean every day. It is not much yet, leaf here, leaf there, but still counts.

I got 2 first radishes today, and they are so small! I do not have luck growing them, they always bolted.

 An there are some more pictures from May's garden.

I built new trellis for Italian tomatoes last weekend. My beds are on the slope and at the end of the summer my bamboo trellises are usually folding down.

 So I made "something" stronger and taller. Tomatoes here are Roma, Viva Italia and some of the Striped cavern.

 I like how my kale bed is looks like, I sprinkled some of the iron bites this spring to get rig of snails that always make me crazy.

 My oversized tomatoes is doing so-so,
lower leaves are yellow, top leave are good, green and strong.

 Yesterday my mom called me and asked - where is your cuces? and really&
I have only 8 plants.

 Cuces are on the left, borago are on the rights.
So I planted more, CHinahlong, Palace King, Suyo and Spacemaster.

Blueberries are blooming.

 Peppers too! Can you see the little bud? I planted them out last week on the black fabric.





















Strawberries are good, blooming.

 My garden looks more like vertical now.

 I am not happy with my beets, they germinated poorly, I believe I will overseed them this week. I have some in left container here.

Shared at: Daphne’s Dandelions “Harvest Monday” where everyone can share links to their harvest or how they are using their harvests for the week.