Untimely Deaths and Midnight Burials

Dead Tomatoes

Despite my excitement about gardening, it turns out I’m still a novice. In fact, I killed off most of the rest of our seedling tomato plants. I had been growing them in the basement under lights, and brought them outside to harden off. Unfortunately I left the lid over the plants while I was at worked, and I ended up with a pile of steamed dead tomato plants.

Dead tomatoes

I’m probably going to have to go buy some pre-grown plants at this point and transplant them.

Dead Blueberry Bush

One of our blueberry bushes didn’t take root. The leaves are almost completely dried up, and it’s not looking too good. All the other blueberries are doing great. I’m not sure what’s up with the one plant. It’s right in the middle of the line, and all that soil had been well mixed before planting.

Strawberry Planting

Our strawberries arrived yesterday! I had already weeded the strawberry patch last weekend so we were all set. A previous owner of our house had put in a two foot wide swath of ugly white landscaping rocks along either side of the driveway, and alongside the walkway to the house. We shoveled and picked those rocks out, and put in some good black dirt / composted manure mix, which I think the strawberries should appreciate.

We got 25 Cavendish, 25 Winona and 50 Annapolis, all from Nourse Farms.

Caroline Planting Strawberries

One thing led to another yesterday, and we didn’t start planting in earnest till about 9:45. Our great neighbor lent us a halogen work light and an extension cord, so we just kept working. It took till at least 11:30 to get everything done and cleaned up. (ok, so it wasn’t quite midnight burials, but it sounded ominous.)

If you didn’t know (and I didn’t, till yesterday), strawberry plants can be planted from essentially just the root and a tiny (1 inch!) bit of stem. Thinking back, this makes sense now since strawberry instructions tell you to mow them down in the fall.

5 strawberry roots/plants

We spaced the plants about a foot apart going down the driveway, but then we staggered them between either side of the two foot strip. Hopefully that’s a good enough spacing for them. We might have ordered too many.

Strawberries lined up for planting

The strawberries are one of our most anticipated crops. Since we won’t have a fence up around them, I’m sure the bunnies are excited too.