It happened again...someone stopped over while the girlies were out back picking raspberries. They came out of the overgrown berry patch, and offered my friend some of what they picked. Nothing like fresh fruit from the garden.
Then she asked the question that everyone asks..."So, what do you do with the raspberries?"
The girlies think this is a weird question. We eat them, silly! We eat them.
I grow about 2 seed packets worth of sugar snap peas, about 100 or so Raspberry canes, at least 100 or so strawberries (mostly Junebearing), gooseberries, currants, and cherries.
What do we do with them? We eat them of course...fresh from the garden....all day long...why ruin it with sugar and cooking?
(I don't eat the peas. I have a green vegetable phobia that I'm still working through...but the kids eat them like potato chips and occasionally fight over them).
Is there any better thing to be eating on a hot day?
Here in Michigan, we've had a significant amount of rain and storms, alternating with extreme heat. Around the beginning of the month, I was patting myself on the back -- my garden looked awesome, with very few weeds and great growth of all of my plants. By this week, the combo of high heat and lots of rain made my garden go from quaint Potager Garden to Crazy Jungle in the Backyard. (My apologies to the neighbors).
We've spent some time this week clearing up the weeds and trying to get some semblance of order back in our backyard grocery store. I have noticed enough to give two thumbs up to the Preen Organic Vegetable Garden Weed Preventer. As I told you all earlier this year, I was testing it out, and I put it in part of my garden. Actually, I put it down in the paths, as I figured that would be the most noticable. The paths where I laid the Preen down heavily, after first completely clearing it of weeds and roots of pernicious weeds looks great. Only a few weeds here and there (mostly purslane, which comes up easily). The paths where there was no Preen are not recognizable as paths at all anymore. Hurray for Preen. We'll be using that next year in the raspberry area, which is by far the worst part of the garden for weeds.
Despite laying down about 6" of mulch in each of our beds -- a friend with a landscaping company had a mulch that his client cancelled on using so he gave me 3 yards -- there were still weeds.
Honestly, I am a little leery about using a chemical to prevent weeds in the garden...the whole point of gardening, for me, is to have chemical free foods, as well as to save on groceries. BUT....this may be a great way to keep the work in the garden to a minimum. There'll still be work to be done, just not as much.
Has anyone else used Organic Preen Weed Preventer for Vegetable Gardens, and if so, what did you think of it? How did it work for you? I'd love to know!
Searching for some yummy treasures in the strawberry bed! Photo by Kimberly Eddy. Just ignore those weeds, okay?
Here's a recent Reader question:
Is there a trick to keeping the garden looking nice? When I go outside, I feel overwhelmed by all of the work that needs to be done, and I feel like I'm spinning my wheels.
Yes!
Just as housework can feel overwhelming if you have "I don't know where to start!" syndrome, so can yard work or gardening. It helps to have a plan in place. Here are some thoughts that have helped me over the years, but I'd love to hear every one else's too! How do YOU keep your garden work from becoming too overwhelming?
My tips:
1. Work Smarter Not Harder
It's my motto for everything.
If you weed well in early spring, usually that helps the weeds from becoming too overwhelming later in the year. You'll still have weeds, but it won't be quite as bad (usually).
I cover my garden beds with heavy black plastic all winter long to suffocate most of the weed action that could be happening otherwise, except for those beds where I have perienniels like strawberries of course. This has also cut back on the weeds quite a bit, and given me very nice soil to work with in spring, as I lay down compost before covering them.
I also add generous amounts of mulch. This is usually last year's leaves, raked up and put into bags over the winter, then shaken out onto my garden beds after the plants were put in. This year, I got some cedar mulch too for other beds.
Pluck off flower heads when they start to look past their prime, unless you want it to reseed into your garden.
Preen Organic Vegetable Garden Weed Preventer (which is basically Corn Gluten from what I've read -- if you can find corn gluten in bulk, that is much cheaper but not as readily available as the kind with Preen on the label) is supposed to prevent weeds. I say "supposed to" because it doesn't make life magically weed free. I'm skeptical of using these kinds of chemicals on my veggie beds, but I have been using it with some success in the paths. "Weed Free" is not accurate, but "far less weeds" is. Sometimes the paths would get pretty out of hand with crab grass and chickory, and so I finally took up my elderly farmer-neighbor on his suggestion that I try it. You can read more about the pros and possible cons of corn gluten as a weed preventer here. Regarding paths: I don't like to mulch those because I feel that mulch also adds nutrients to the soil as it biodegrades, and I do NOT want "Fertile" garden paths...I want Barren garden paths :-).
Weed whack around your garden BEFORE grass and dandelions have gone to seed.
2. Divide the garden into sections.
Raised beds help with this I think. It's easier to tell the kids (or yourself) "Today's job is to weed this bed and path next to the tomatos" than to say "Go weed the garden!"
Optionally, using this idea, you can:
Assign each member of the family a different section to work on (this way, each person only needs to learn what a few plants look like and weed up the rest).
Assign each day a different section (works great unless it is always raining on a certain day -- which just happened here...poor strawberries are a little weedy)
Work your way methodically through the garden, starting over again when you reach the last section.
3. Anything that is not growing where it's supposed to is a weed.
Dont' allow it. If you say, "This bed has only tomatoes in it, with peas in between" you only need to teach your children, and remember yourself, what tomatoes and peas look like. You don't have to ask every five minutes if this is an important plant or not. It's much more efficient. By the way, tomatoes drain your soil, but peas secure nitrogen in the soil, and they can climb on the tomato cages. I like to grow my peas with tomatoes.
4. Don't put any pernicious weeds into your composter.
Burn them. Pernicious weeds are the ones that don't seem to ever die. When you spread around your compost, you'll be spreading around seeds for those weeds! Yikes!
5. If something is a spreader be cautious about adding it to your garden or you may have a problem on your hands.
Some spreaders are awesome...like Strawberries. I'll never say I have too many strawberry plants. I can't say the same about the Oregano that took over my front yard though. Spreaders aren't bad, they are just plants you should use caution when planting. Keep an eye on them before you have a backyard "little shop of horrors" on your hands.
A few signs something might be a spreader:
everyone you know is trying to give you some that they dug up out of their garden. If they have "extra" they probably have "too much".
Sometimes it's referred to as "ground cover", or has words like "spreading" or "creeping" in the name, or is listed as growing "easily" in "any soil"
Mint and Oregano are the worst. Mint gets a bad rap but I think Oregano is far, far worse. You've been warned.
You've admired it growing by the side of the road in ditches alongside miles of highway in remote places.
6. My confession: My garden has weeds in it.
Things still grow even if the garden isn't spic and span. My goal is a beautiful garden, but if that doesn't happen...oh well. Life goes on.
So, after looking at this fresh-from my garden strawberry, you may be wondering, "How do I start a Strawberry bed?" You're in luck, I'm about to tell you.
First, though...a freebie. This is a line drawing, coloring sheet that shows you the parts of a strawberry plant. It doubles as a reminder for exactly how deep to plant your strawberry crown. You can download it here. A smaller picture of the pdf is below.
Strawberries are almost too easy to grow. Because they grow back year after year, it's important to get them off to a good start, in a good location, so that you don't have problems later on. The strawberries will probably still grow and produce fruit for you under pretty much any condition, but the quality of the fruit, and the amount of weeding is dependent on your preparation work now.
What do you need?
1. Good soil. Strawberries have very shallow roots, so you want soil that holds moisture easily. Not too sandy, where the water will go away too fast. Strawberries don't do well in really clay-like soil either. They do best in what is known as "loamy" soil, that is, soil that is loose and full of organic material. I've found though that Strawberries, as they spread, will grow pretty much anywhere, including the cracks in concrete and hanging pots.
2. An area as weed-free as possible. Weeds are a huge issue when raising strawberries.They don't attract more weeds than other plants. Weeds become an issue because strawberry roots are so shallow, they are easily pulled up when you are weeding unwanted plants, so you want to deal with any perienniel weeds (like grasses) as much as is possible before you plant your strawberries. You'll never fully master all weeds, of course, but you can help prepare a bed for strawberries (or anything else) by first double digging the dirt (digging out the first 6" of soil, setting asside, then digging out 6 more inches, and putting in the first 6" into the hole, before adding the last 6" on top), and removing all weeds, roots, seeds, and so forth. This is obviously quite a bit of work, but it saves you work later. When doing something like this, I also add compost to my soil to fertilize it. 3. Healthy strawberry plants or crowns. I've not had much luck with seeds. Strawberries send off runners, as you can see in my picture I made for you, resulting in baby plants. If you know someone who has too many baby strawberry plants, they may be willing to either give you some of these runners or sell them to you for very little. Nurseries usually sell strawberry plants each year, in the springtime, or they may have crowns, which are half-dead looking plants. I blogged more about planting strawberries in this post from yesterday. All I've every purchased were 10 strawberry crowns, and I now have about 200 plants. They spread quite well.
4. Mulch of some sort. I imagine that strawberries were first called straw-berries because they were grown in straw for mulch. Because of the weed issues, mulch is pretty important for strawberries. I find that old leaves from last year's raking works best, being careful not to cover up the blossoms or fruits. Mulch also helps keep the moisture in.
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I was wondering about your strawberry bed. It seems that you are growing these as a perennial, which is something I am interested in. All the books say to plant strawberry crowns, but I can only find strawberry plants in my area. Also, October is when you plant strawberries in Louisiana, so I was wondering if I buy one of those leggy-looking plants, do I just snip off the offshoots and plant them separately into some sort of bed form, or do I plant the whole plant, legs and all?
This is what greeted me this morning after my work out! Mmmm.
I can't speak to Lousiana, but up here in Michigan, early in the spring (like, March--when there is often still snow) many nurseries have the crowns (which are also called sets or baby plants or a few other words I can't think of right now).They usually have them bundled like a dead little mass of blackish looking roots, with a rubberband around them. The first time I bought them I doubted that they would grow...but those first ten plants are the ONLY ones I've ever bought since...and I now have around 200 plants. There's some exponential growth for you!
The thing about the strawberry sets is that they are rarely out on the shelves (I assume it is because they look half dead). You may try asking.
If you can't find them, not to worry. Strawberries are easy to transplant, probably because they are planted so shallow. I usually clip off the runners and plant them separately. Amazingly, those shoots will form roots rather quickly when placed on top of some fertile, loose soil, and watered. This is how I've gotten so many strawberry plants. Usually, the first year your strawberry crop will be disappointing--very tiny strawberries. Most books say to pinch them off to let the plant grow stronger (so that the plant doesn't waste energy on making small fruits), but we let them grow anyway. We were impatient ;).The first year, you should also pinch off runners so that they don't grow, while the plant is maturing.
When planting strawberries, it would be helpful to look online or in a good gardening book to see exactly how deep to plant the strawberry plant. That is the one are where strawberries are fussy.
As your plants grow and start to send off runners, I have found it useful to use peat pots or some extra little containers to catch the runners in. I fill them up with moist soil, and place them under the runners so that they will root in the cup. When they have developed some roots, I snip them, and plant them where I want them to go. Doing this, I have continuously developed a long bed of strawberries. I have also replaced any berry plants that died in this way, and shared strawberry plants with others.
One more thing: everbearing strawberries create fruit throughout the growing season, but Junebearing only produce fruit in June (or early spring).
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gardening
and hanging pots. 
