I finally got back into the garden where we had the yellow jacket "incident" and was ripping out weeds. In the midst of my weed-ripping, I took a good, hard look at the strawberry bed and decided that since there were more strawberries OUTside of the bed that I would just rip them all out and transplant them someplace else. Of course, it wasn't as easy as I thought. I kept finding more strawberry plants and what I thought would take just a little bit ended up taking two hours....then Paul and Rhiannon brought me a tea. An iced tea. Because it was 85 degrees out. So I quit weeding for the day.
There is a big plastic tote filled with the plants as well as a smaller tub. Except now I'm not quite sure when to plant them. Heck, I don't even have the slightest idea where I'm going to plant them. Do I plant them now or do I somehow overwinter them in a bucket of sand or something and then plant them in the spring? I guess I have some internet research to do.
Paul made the mistake of suggesting that we plant them in elevated boxes and I thought that was a great idea....except we don't have any elevated boxes. Which means we (we, meaning Paul) would have to build them. And there's already a ton of things on the To Do list. Mom gave me a garbage bag filled with asparagus plants that I still have to find a place for and the four mulberry trees that I managed to bring back from the dead still need holes dug and planted. The jalapeno peppers need to be picked (although not by me; I refuse to even touch those intestinal demons), the tomato jungle is still putting out green tomatoes (future green tomato & onion relish) and the herb garden needs to be weeded & whacked back, I need to pick the last of the basil and dry it and have to harvest the dried okra pods for seed.
I thought that gardening season was over, but it seems that it's just begun.
85 degrees in October... that sounds nice! What a blessing to have so many plants to handle. Lots of work, I know, but you always make such amazing things. :) I would love to have that bag full of asparagus plants!
ReplyDeleteI have yet to face my strawberry bed. It's mostly weeds, thanks to the abundance (past tense) of chipmunks that populated the place this year. I need to whack the plants down, weed and mulch. If we can get a day or two without an icy drizzle, I might get it done before is snows. Which is in the forecast for Fri/Sat.
ReplyDeleteYou can plant strawberries in the midwest (KS, MO) in November. I have always done so, because you don't have to water them all summer and you will get some berries that first spring. Not a lot, but some. Just plant and mulch and ignore them till March, when you want to pull the mulch back to let them get some sun. Hope this helps.
ReplyDeleteHey Carolyn! I gave up to-do lists because I kept losing them and then making a new list which started out "Find my to-do list" Life gets so crazy and then we die. Still, I envy your garden work. When I went back to school the garden went totally AWOL and yet I can still pull veggies out of there for dinner. I need a tank to get past all the weeds but still...
ReplyDeleteThat's what you get for living in the Banana Belt of the country! A gardening season that won't quit. (Ha, listen to me . . . we're still without a killing frost up here where everything in the garden should have been dead and buried long ago.) I agree with Kat above. I'll bet you could plant those strawberry plants (as soon as Paul gets all the elevated boxes built) now and have a real running start on next spring/summer.
ReplyDeleteI went out to pick the last of the dried beans yesterday. I had to have blinders on because I kept seeing a pepper here, a tomato there. Although they were not real good ones, I still wanted to pick them.
ReplyDeleteJulie, I've been putting off buying asparagus plants for EVER...but guess this was my lucky year!
ReplyDeleteSusan, my strawberry bed was 99% weeds. One of the reasons I thought it wasn't such a bad idea to move them. SNOW? This weekend? Ick.
Kat, Thank you for the info! I'll get them planted them soon then.
Donna, If I gathered all the lost To-Do lists I could compile a novel. And as for all the weeds in the garden, just think of it as giving the pests something ELSE to nibble on instead of the veggies.
SFG, I KNOW! I can't get out of there without saying "just one more".