Strawberries--lots and lots of strawberries

I work full time during the week, and don't work on Sundays, so Saturdays is the only real day we have to make a lot of progress on the homestead.  Unfortunately, that puts us at the mercy of the weather.

This week we had planned to do quite a bit in the garden--move strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and plant early sweet corn.  But since we got a lot of rain this week, things were still very muddy, so we had to modify our plans a bit.  

The only garden work we were able to do was transplant strawberries.  We were able to do this because we had covered the strawberry bed with black plastic when we planted the first row, and so the dirt underneath the plastic was dry.  (We poke holes in it after we get it planted).  Last spring we had planted about 75 plants, and they spread throughout the summer.  We moved about 140-150 plants to the new bed, and expect them to do pretty well.  The plastic will keep weeds down--the biggest challenge with strawberries, and will help warm the soil.  We will either clip the runners or let them whither, in order to allow the plant to maximize the energy being put in to the fruit.  We'll have another bed without plastic on which we'll let runners develop as we prepare for the next strawberry bed.  Because you should rotate beds every 2-3 years, you have to be constantly thinking ahead to the next patch.

I also mowed grass around the gardens and the various trails I have for getting around the homestead.  Next week we'll hopefully till some more ground and plant sweet corn.  In the area where strawberries were last summer, I'll work up the soil and expand the blackberry patch.  

We also cleared some more trees along the one side of the hayfield.  We're slowly getting the junk box elder trees cleared back to the original edge of the woods, and giving air and sunlight to the oaks, hickerys, and other hardwood trees.  Plus, it will give us more open area for pasture, hay, etc.

Finally, we weeded around each of the fruit trees.  This really needed to be done, so the trees to don't have to compete so much for moisture and nutrients.  When we planted the trees last spring, we put a lot of composted horse manure around the roots, so they seem to be doing very well.

    

Our oldest decided to dig a "turkey trap" in the one garden bed, but all he caught was one of our own turkeys.