Strawberry Runners.

 Strawberry runners can reduce the overall vigour of your strawberry plant and therefore reduce the potential size and health of your strawberries. 

Here's what you can do.

Strawberry TLC

 Unbaffling the Baffled

Strawberries have had me baffled for a while but over the last year or two I've been focused on unbaffling myself.

It seems to me the more popular a plant is and the more information there is written about such it and then the more misinformation there is.

What I've looked for is consistent and often repeated information and messages.

Fertilizer time

Information like, strawberries like to be well watered and well fed. Along with as much sunshine as possible. They also like a rich well prepared soil with loads of added organic matter.

And also now (mid Winter) is a good time to water, fertilise and mulch your strawberries which I'm doing right now.

I mention Macro nutrients during the video and there is a fairly thorough article on Wikipedia about Plant nutrients if you're interested. 

Time to Get Cracking

I'm pinching New Gippsland Seeds facebook post here but it's good advice and I'm sure they won't mind.

You'd better get cracking though, you're running out of time if you want to plant any of these bare rooted.

Post by New Gippsland Seeds.

Cheers

Stewart

Cheating a little

Post by My Veggie Garden.

When I'm Feeling Blue

I'm feeling a little blue today. After weeks of fabulous late Autumn weather things have turned cold for us here.
And after a miserable overcast day yesterday that only managed to deliver us a grand total of four mils of rain I've decided to cheer myself up with a heap of photos that I took of the garden last Tuesday.
These were taken at around 11:00 am and the weak, late Autumn sunlight, was simply marvelous for taking photos.

 Spinach is just getting going. Made a nice spinach spaghetti with them the other day.

Two tubs of lettuce is keeping me going.

A Lisbon Lemon tree I planted on Tuesday. I've got a video to edit on planting it and then you'll be hearing a lot more about this

Might be my last strawberry now until the weather warms up again. They are still flowering but I suspect the cold will take care or that for a while. 

Same for my chilli

And tomatoes. This is a late planting of tomatoes in the warmest part of my garden in an effort to see if I can get tomatoes to fruit here during winter in Toowoomba.

More lettuce. Never too much lettuce. What I don't eat the chooks (chickens) will take care of.

Silverbeet going gangbusters 

 as is the garlic.

Peas are powering and I've sown some old purple podded pea seed I found while tidying up and they are sprouting up out of the ground too.

I came out of hospital in early July last year and was greeted with mandies from my tree so I'm looking forward to a big mandy feast very soon.

Broad beans are growing strongly.

 Biggest and best parsley I've ever grown.

This might finally be the end of my Basil too.

Rhubarb's getting ready for winter.

And sage.

I feel better now or at least not so blue.

Cheers

Stewart.

Wow, what a day.

Wow, what a day. It's my daughter's 21st and it's been two months since my last operation and after today's effort in the garden I'm feeling ecstatic.

It's been years now since I've been able to do a full day's work and still feel OK at the end of the day.

The morning was made up of weeding, watering and liquid fertilising everything and I mean everything. Roses, perennials, annuals, veggies. You name it it got liquid ferilised. 

I've planted a lot of flowering annuals this year to keep me happy. Annuals like petunias, poppies, snappies, pansies, violas, and primulas in the shady parts of the garden as well. All of these were liquid fertilized as well as all the veggies like the peas, silverbeet, garlic, lettuce, cabbages, strawberries, chillies (still flowering and being warm here for this time of the year I might get another small crop) and broccoli.

The afternoon was all the boring stuff like putting all the prunings through the mulcher, working over the compost heap, mowing the lawn and clearing an overgrown site for planting the Lisbon lemon I bought.

My daughter, the one turning 21, works in a coffee shop/cafe so guess what this is.

Getting rad with my ish. There's 500 little radish seeds per packet so I won't be running out any time soon.

A handy sized seed, no pun intended, I'm just poking a few into small spaces or in between  rows of other veggies, they'll be long gone and out of the way by the time the other veggies grow up

My lemonade tree lemonading.

Seriously just juice and drink, delicious

Next cab off the rank. This is the Lisbon I bought and will be planting in the area I started preparing this after noon.

Two little rhubarb leaves.

When I was harvesting some leaves last week a chunk of main stem came off as well so I bunged it into a pot full of potting mix and now it's looking like I've two more Rhubarbs to plant come spring.

A flower a day for September #7.

Well the elections been decided and I'm a year older. But wiser? Well that remains to be seen.

My Strawberries are in flower so maybe I can give five tips on things to do with your Strawberries right now.  That way I can combine my flowers for September thing with My Veggie Garden thing.

1. Weed;  should go without saying but you need to keep the weed population down because they will eat up all the goodness from the soil and compete with your Strawbs for water and nutrient and we don't want that now do we?
2. Watering;  if it's not raining at your place then keeping the soil moist and not letting anymore than the top 20 to 30 mm of topsoil dry out before watering again will keep them growing at a regular pace.  Good uninterrupted,  continuous growth is what we want here.
3. Mulching;  if you haven't already mulched then right now would be a good time to get out your bale of straw and get busy.  If you don't have any straw then whatever you have on hand will have to do.  I don't particularly like to mulch so thick that watering doesn't get to the soil.  The main thing you're after is enough to slow down the top soil from drying out too quick.  Something around 25mm thick is enough.
4. Fertilize;  I like to use blood and bone for my Strawbs and now a good time to to whack some on.  You'll also need to apply some potash as well seeing as there isn't any in the blood and bone.  Just the recommended rates on the side or back of the packets is enough.
5. Compost;  you can put this on at the same time as your fertilizer and work it into the top 20 to 30mm of soil being careful not to disturb the root system too much. They'll love you for it.

Cheers for now and Happy Birthday to me ;)

Stewart

I am a giddy goat!

Well, I am a silly sausage then, aren't I?

I was meant to include these photos of the Strawberry patch being strawed in yesterday's post but forgot all about them and clean left them out.

I was also going to say how I side dressed them with compost and added a hand full or two of Rooster Booster fertilizer as well. And how I finished off the whole thing by watering them with some fish and seaweed emulsion.

Just as well I remembered today then.

Cheers

Stewart.

Just a quickie!

Uni's hell folks. Just a quick update in point form

• Started preparing shaded veggie beds for spring plantings
• The strawberries are starting to move - cleaned up any dead or dying leaves - gave them a feed - re potted one in to a larger pot.
• Fertilized, watered and mulched the blueberry.
• No rain here for nearly 8 weeks so there has been plenty of watering going on
• Purple podded peas are doing very nicely, heaps of flowers and setting plenty of purple pods.
• Transplanted red iceberg seedlings into the garden
• Picked a mini cauliflower as well as a violet Sicilian
• 7 eggs from the girls, happy about that. Let the bartering begin.
• Gained extra ground at the community gardens but am struggling to find time to get down there and do what is needed.

OK. Back to the books

Bye for now

Stewart

Done Diggin', for now & Kylie's Rose

Well I had a good productive day in the garden today.

In my home garden I managed to weed and mulch the Italian garlic, Purple flowering Broad Beans and the Strawberries as well as giving them a dose of fish emulsion.

I'm still chasing the Grey aphids that seem determined to keep having a go at my brassicas.



Then after lunch I went down to the community gardens to finish digging the last third of my garden plot.

As this bed is mainly going to be used for a spring planted crop of potatoes I'll probably plant more peas in here mainly as a green manure crop.

I'll let them go until I get at least one picking of peas off the bushes and then dig the whole lot in.





I also went down yesterday (Sunday) to plant some Leek and Spring Onion seedlings. The photo is a bit short on detail but you get the picture.











The ' Greenfeast' peas I planted are up and going strong.

I also mulched them with some aged horse manure that is available at the gardens, so that should help them along as well.







Kylie's Rose.

This is a photo of Kylie's Rose who is my step daughter.

I can't remember how I came by this rose and I don't remember what it is called either, but we attributed it's beauty to Kylie and it has been with me now for 17/18 years (the rose and Kylie that is).




We lived on the Gold Coast at the time I purchased it and when we moved here to Toowoomba Kylie's Rose came with us.

Strawberry upgrade.

Strawberry upgrade.

Time for me to upgrade my favorite strawberry into a larger pot so I can get more favorite strawberries to eat.

SOS (Secrets of Success) = Good quality potting mix.






How to tell how much potting mix you need in the bottom of your new pot.
Simply put how much you think you need in the bottom of your new pot then stand the old pot in to measure the height to your satisfaction.








Job done. It'll probably send out some runners now which I'll need to keep trimmed.

I'll also plant a few of the runners so as to keep up a three year rotation of plants.

This one is just starting it's second year so I've still got two years of strawberry eating from this pot yet.