Strawberries

 

So, strawberries arrived, and planting needed to commence. This is a location where we choose to plant them. It is quite shady place, partly shaded by the bush from east and a tree from west. We picked shady location because strawberries love loads of moisture, and we hoped that  in shady location the strawberries will be a wee bit happier.







The first step in preparation of the bed is to take out layer of the dirt so that chicken wire can be put in. Unfortunately that is necessary because we're plagued by ground squirrels, and putting the chicken wire inside the dirt is the best long term solution. It is important not to bury it deeper than 10 cm, less is preferable. If you bury it deeper the buggers will just dig tunnels above the wire. We removed approximately 5 cm of the dirt, because we planed to enrich the soil.




 So here it is dirt back on top of the wire, enriched with the 'top soil' we got from one of the chain hardware stores (it was cheep, around $3 per bag). You can see darker colour of the dirt. That indicates a soil with the loads of goodies in it for plants.
I also learned that woodchips that I had on top of the bed are bad for soil because if you dig them in they tend to rob a ground of the nitrogen.





So, to combact the fact that there is a lot of wood-chips inside the ground I put alpha-alpha as a mulch. This plant is a nitrogen gatherer, so by spring, when this hay is decomposed, my strawberries will get enough nitrogen.
The reason for mulching is to help ground retain moisture and prevent weeds from poping up.
Here the average moisture during the summer is around 20 to 30%  in the best case scenarios, which means, that naked ground gets dry withing the hour. Mulch is necessary to prevent that.



 However, although the alpha-alpha was great choice for mulch, it is a great attractant for rabbits we have in neighborhood. So, my husband insisted that some kind of barrier is put on top of the strawberries bed. At the moment, it is improvised, because my hubby is rather busy and has to deal with the other stuff, so as an additional deterrent I used the recipe I found on the net, water in which I soaked jalapeno and garlic. I put that deterrent just in case little buggers manage to get inside.
We plan later to put the wired fence around this bed, but that has to wait a bit, either for me to heal, or for my hubby to finish his pressing project.

New direction in blogging

I made a break in blogging mostly because loads of obligations at work, and partly because I reached point where I would like to use blog for sharing something useful, and not to write just another rant-blog about another human with an access to the internet.

It took long time to find appropriate topic. Surprisingly,  my recent car accident helped me to find satisfying topic. Under influence of painkillers I ended up buying a bunch of perennial plants for garden. So, I decided to learn how to care for them so that money is not wasted.

We have rather big yard, front and back that is at the moment full of weeds, ground squirrels mounds, dog poop, and wild bunnies which one of my neighbor feeds.  So my gardening will face a loads of challenges.
Plus to make thing worse, we live in mountains, 7000 feet, in the area that has high desert climate. Last frost date is June 15, and first frost date is September 17th. Tough.

My gardening knowledge is limited. I've grown up in mountains, but the ones that are wet and fertile. So dealing with constant drought like conditions and way more pest than I ever encountered is new for me.
Anyway, I'm still recovering from accident and I am reading bunch of gardening books. Each of them says that the most important thing is to plan your garden. Before ordering plants.
I guess I have to improvise and plan garden before my plants arrive....

Anyway, I learned yesterday that my strawberries are on a way, so things got serious. I ordered 12 plants of 3 different wild strawberries variety. Even under those blasted painkillers, I was thinking that wild strawberries should be fine here since I've seen them grow in mountains, and our neighbors have ordinary kind that is quite happy....

  I mentioned dog poop earlier, well, the source of that poop is our dog, who loves to dig. So we decided to put no poisons, no chemicals in our gardening. Of course, that makes the whole issue way more complicated.

Anyway, I started reading books on organic gardening, and learned first time in my life that you can combine different plants to achieve role reserved for pesticides, and that kitchen scraps combined with wee bit of paper can make a nice fertilizer.

So for now, we started composting. At the moment, that is a heap of kitchen scraps with a improvisation on dry material. Apparently, you have to combine 2:1 for dry and wet material (carbon : nitrogen) to achieve proper decomposition that does not stink. 
And non stinky compost is important. We have very dangerous combination of neighbors. Bears and weekend dwellers.  People who have here only weekend houses are ignorant about bears, thinking that those are just big pets or Disney movie characters. So they feed them, or if they do not feed them, then they leave trash laying around even for a week at the time. This attracts bears, especially in the late summer and autumn, when bears eat a lot to prepare for winter. Of course, those same eejits that leave food for bears also think it is cute when bear appears and starts eating trash. So they usually get out with camera and aww around it. And bear learns that people are not dangerous, and that people means food. Later that same bear starts breaking into houses, cars, or even attacking people who have attractive smells on them (think about fruit based shampoo). In the best case scenario only one bear ends up killed. Punished for human stupidity. In the worse case (when human is attacked), any bear in vicinity will be killed.
So, that is danger we have, and since I do not wish to have a bear in my yard, smelly compost is big no-no. Because, yeah, bears would come and eat the kitchen scraps from compost. And then decide to get into the house to snack on my pets, food from cupboards and fridge. Definitely situation to avoid.
At the moment we are succeeding, our compost is not smelly, but my husband is tending it, and mixing it almost every day.

 So, back to the strawberries. We picked location for them, in a front yard.  Apparently strawberries are perennial so they cannot go to the location we decided to put our vegetable garden. Now, I'm trying to find out which companion plants go with strawberries and what kind of soil, mulch, and rest of goodies they need. At the moment I'm happy because it seems like that thyme which I already have in location goes well with strawberries, so I do not have to remove it.
According to the books I read, I will need to enrich the soil, which I plan to do with pot soil, since we do not have compost ready, and put alfalfa straw as a mulch around strawberries. Of course I need to put chicken wire inside the designated bed because of ground squirrels.  I have all of that. So, hopefully everything will go fine when my strawberries arrive.