More and more Strawberries

Well, I planted lots of Strawberries this week, and have many more to go! At the community garden we planted 53 plants during and in between a hail storm with 2 little kids. It went pretty well all in all, but have over a hundred left!!! We are planting more at the garden, and I am sneaking them into other people's gardens, planting into containers for my friends who don't have gardens, and putting them in my own garden. I will take whatever is left over to my farm. It used to be a strawberry farm just like all the rest of Vashon Island before the farmers were interned into work camps for the war... but that is another story. Please contact me if you want to install a strawberry patch anywhere in the next few days and you live in or near Seattle/ Vashon. I will sell them for .75 per plant until I am out, and the varieties again are Tri Star and Puget Reliance- both good for places with poor drainage and resistant to root rots. Make sure you have a weeded area or good container to put them in first and contact me at jayne@sistersageherbs.com or goodfoodgardens@gmail.com
peace - Jayne

Planting bare root Strawberries & Blueberries

Yay Fruit! So, My strawberries are here, and they are scary looking! They come dormant and dank looking... They are not sprouting yet, which it says in the instructions is a good thing, but I have to put them in the ground as soon as possible, so I am off to plant in all the gardens I know. I am filling pots and planting them in every open row I can find! One of my clients cancelled on me, so I have a few extra! If you want to plant some this year, email me at jayne@sistersageherbs.com and I will see how many I have and the price after shipping.

The spacing is supposed to be one plant per square foot, but the ever bearing ones can be planted closer. I planned on planting equal amounts of June bearing and ever bearing so that we would have early and late crops from the Tri Star, and a big crop of Puget Reliance in the middle of the season all at once for canning, etc. Both were chosen because of the resistance to root rot, etc and appropriate for our climate and wet winters in general. I am going to try to dry some, can some, freeze some, and eat as many fresh as I can!

I have a couple of fruit trees I never re-planted- one cherry is already laden with fruit nubbins, and the other apple will probably be planted at the farm but both are espalier trained. I also got some black raspberries and blueberries (all bare root) and we will see how those go this year! Yay fruit!

More transplanting & tomato seeds started

I started tons of seeds for the community garden yesterday. We were given seeds from tomatobob.com for the garden, and have 8-10 of each variety if everything works out. The varieties are: Noir de Crimee, Giant Belgium, Mortgage Lifter, Money Maker, Missouri Pink Love Apple, Martino's Roma, Matt's Wild Cherry & Mr Stripey. I helped a friend transplant tomato seedlings yesterday for trade in future plants for insurance. She let me take home the smallest sprouts because they will never catch up to the stronger ones but they have a head start on my seeds. I put them in my truck so they stay warmer than I could keep them otherwise. I can't remember all of the varieties, but I know I have: Glacier, Brandywine, Abraham Lincoln, Paul Robeson, & a few more. I guess the next project is setting up hoop houses & researching their growth habits ...

Planting Herb Seeds with Kids

I brought seeds to the after school program I teach so that they could plant something for Earth Day. I brought chamomile, clover, calendula & dill, and had them try to ID them.  Everyone got chamomile right (we made chamomile tea, too), but the others were more difficult. We talked about what a seed needs to grow into a plant - sun, soil, air, water, care & love; and how the different shapes of the seeds could help them get themselves planted... the round ones can roll, the smallest ones can fly through the air, the pokey ones can grip onto things and get carried to another spot, and the flat ones can slip into cracks and still put down roots.  We went outside (the best part for the youngest ones) and planted them in four compartment pots with labels. The small kids definitely mixed all the seeds into all the compartments, but the older kids were writing their own labels and making sure they put their seeds in the right place.  They took them home since there is no greenhouse at the school,  and are to report when the plants sprout. They are all excited to grow plants somewhere in their gardens. Some of the kids already knew who would help them keep the plants alive! All in all it was quite rewarding for me & them.

Sow Seeds again and again

I just started my third batch of seeds of the year- I have lots of beets, kale, lettuces (I am trying Iceberg this year), leeks & yellow onions. It is a good idea to start seeds every two to three weeks in the northwest, because of the variability in weather and because you will want to have some plants to eat that are maturing each week. I like to eat salads from the direct seeded area between the seedling planted in the garden.  It is hard to remember to keep seeding while you are harvesting more lettuce than you can eat, but you have to, or you won't get good summer salads. I learned to put squash seeds into the lettuce bed near the end of the harvest, and by the time the squash are big enough to throw shade on the lettuce, you are done with that bed!
I just took a cool webinar class about crop rotation, and am going to try to incorporate some of the things they talked about in some of the gardens I am planning this year. I never plant the same food in the same beds year after year, but I have not kept track of exactly what was sown where in my garden... this year it will be different! I even learned a cool way to track the garden in a simple excel sheet. I will keep updating my progress through the season...