A Start In Gardening

We have a strawberry!

I planted forty strawberry starts several weeks ago. They were leftovers from a nursery in town and were “certified”, whatever that means in plant talk. I was told they were very hardy and could be planted in almost any type of soil. They did survive being planted upside down for a couple of hours so I believe they are quite tough.

Notice that the strawberry plant is planted in very gravelly bark. It is also planted, along with some of it’s family, right under a pine tree and I have to rake dead pine needles away from them a couple times a week. I am kind of surprised they are growing as well as they are in these conditions. I believe in tough love.

Really, only about half of the plants I planted are going to survive, but that is way higher statistics than I usually get in gardening.

We were also told that this strawberry plant spreads out and forms vines, so if they survive we should have more each year. Then I am supposed to divide them when they get too thick. Good thing I have a couple of years to learn how to do that!

Thankfully Luca has happily taken on the roll as strawberry plant nurturer and she makes sure they get water every day. It has been her summer project.

Here are my daisies. I am hoping that this plant has at least doubled in size by this time next year. I bought the smallest of the daisy plants at Wal-Mart because I felt sorry for it. It was on clearance and the others weren’t and it needed some love. It has twice as many flowers now than it did when we planted it a few weeks ago. (this is only a portion of it…it isn’t THAT small)