Growing strawberries has traditionally intimidated me and I’ve never tried them! I have visions of snails, slugs, rats and mice always beating me to a harvest. Seen as though that was my same reason for not trying to grow vegetables, I knew it was time to take a stab at one of my favorite fruits. The local home improvement warehouse had bags of a few bare-root varieties. They were super cheap, so I thought I’d give it a go.
I decided on Sequoia, primarily because it does well in my area and because it’s ever-bearing. This refers to the fact that it bears over a longer period of time (Spring through late Summer) than the more prolific yet short 3 week harvest time of the June-bearing type.
Life springs forth from the bare-root Sequoia strawberries.
These bare-root plants looked pretty pathetic and brown when I removed them from their package. I ended up separating about 14 plants ($3.95!!) and planted 2-3 each in 5 pots. Since their planting about 3 weeks ago, I’ve got a pretty good growth rate: about 12 have new leaves. Once they begin to mature, I’m planning on dividing them to 1 per pot.
New life.
The second exciting happening in my garden is something I posted about a week or so ago, and that’s my potatoes! The potatoes in the ground sprouted and grew leaves faster than in my grow pots. I’m guessing it has something to do with the deeper planting depth in the grow pots. Now the leaf sprouts are coming up everywhere!
These grow pots are only planted at half their depth. As the leaves reach toward the sky, I will continue to mound up more soil to create more underground potatoes. I’m waiting until about a 6″ height before doing my first mounding.
As you may be able to tell here, this second grow pot contains my blue potatoes. I'm so thrilled that their leaves also have a bluish tinge to them!
My in-ground potatoes have a head start to the others. I'm enjoying their attractive foliage and hearty nature.
Bountiful Backyard 