When we moved up here we brought all of our plants with us.. some of which were five of the most pathetic strawberries you have ever seen. Where we moved from stopped us from watering our gardens after four years,( a major reason we decided to move), which made most of the plants weaker than normal.
The strawberries were in three boxes Wayne and I made from scraps of wood we had. We left them in those boxes for a month before I found a place for them in the yard. This is what they looked like when we planted them....
Then a few months later we had our first snow... We thought for sure they were goners...
But they not only survived, they flourished, giving us the most fruit we had ever had from them...
Those five little plants turned into twenty and over filled the garden made for them. Then came the snails,slugs and pill bugs, eating our berries before they were ready.
So I once again turned to the lessons learned for my Grandma, remembering that strawberries usually need to be on a mound so the berries don't touch the ground. We instead put straw under them, deterring the critters for a few weeks. Finding though that it only gave them a place to hide... we tried another method... coffee grounds. What a difference that made ! Not only are the berries bug free, but they now are the largest berries we have had from these plants.
This is our bed of strawberries today...
and here are two of the melt in your mouth berries they gave us for our breakfast...
YUMMY !!!
We are so honored to have this beautiful award given to us from Deidra @ http://astorybookworld.blogspot.com/ If you haven't been by her blog yet, we highly recommend that you give her a visit. She is AMAZING !!! Thank you so much Deidra, we love awards !!
Hope you enjoyed the tale of our strawberries...
JL&B
