Strawberries

Today I planted 75 strawberry plants. 25 each of Tri-star, Shuksan and Benton. It was cold (about 40 degrees) and my fingers were pretty cold by the time I finished. There are freeze warnings in effect for later in the week. The strawberries will probably be OK but the bare-root fruit trees we planted last weekend might need some mulch.

Rototilled Today

I went to the farm today intending to set out 75 strawberry plants I received recently from Raintree Nursery. As I was looking over the area where I intended to plant them, I noticed a lot of grass coming up in the soil I had last tilled in early December. I sure would like to take another whack at that grass before setting out the plants. So I started up the tiller to see how it would do. We had an inch of rain yesterday, so I wasn't very hopeful. Voila! the soil tilled nicely. It is mostly sand with lots of Cedar Grove compost worked in. It tilled very nicely.

So I went on and tilled the entire garden (1/4 acre). Only the very lowest 2 ft were a bit wet for tilling.

Then it started raining again -- hard. So I will delay planting another day. I have 25 plants each of three Varieties: Tri-star, Shucksan, and Benton. I planted Shuksan two years ago at the house and liked it a lot.

February Harvest

Yesterday, Feb 12, we harvested a nice meal of brussel sprouts and leeks. It's so nice to have something fresh from the garden in mid-winter.

We also planted fruit trees: 3 frost peach, 1 liberty apple and 1 dayton apple, several thornless blackberry and several red raspberries. Before we planted the berries, I dug a ditch to help drain part of the front garden and we piled up dirt to raise the root zone of the berries up away from water during heavy winter rains.

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The garlic and shallots are up nicely. I mulched two beds of garlic and left two beds unmulched. I thing the mulched beds will do better -- fewer weeds.

January

Not much happened in January. I had a bad cold. We had some really cold weather. And I worked on a new chicken house -- sized for 25 laying hens. I'll post pictures of it when I have it closer to being done.

We did plant a bunch of walla walla sweet onions today. One bunch = one row. We could use a couple more rows. $3/bunch at Cenex. Pretty good looking onion sets, not like last years half dried out sets. You plant walla wallas from pencil-like starts. These were a good quarter inch in diameter.

Jennie also cleaned up the rose bed and the raised vegetable bed. I'm considering putting a hoop cover over the raised bed. We could probably get lettuce and spinach a month earlier that way.