Don’t Let Your Daughters Run Wild in the Garden…

Don’t let them move out and live where ever they please.

Too many daughters living in a small area puts a strain on resources… and in no time the place is looking like the slums.  Everything is crowded and jumbled up and nobody is getting the nutrition they need and many are lost in the shuffle and overlooked.

Next thing you know they are having daughters themselves and the whole garden goes to hell in a hand basket.

Oh… you thought I was doling out Motherly advice?  Nope! 

Just a little ‘learned the hard way’ Gardening Advice going on from the Accidental Strawberry Farmer. 

Did you know that those new plants that grow from the main or ‘mother’ plant are called daughters?  Me neither… until recently when I did a little (too late) reading on the subject of strawberries.

I made the mistake of buying 2 strawberry plants last year.  Well – ok – I thought it was 2 strawberry plants in those 4” pots.  What I actually had was 25 plants… in each pot.  NO – what I actually had was more than 25 plants in each.  So I planted my 2 plants 50 plants (I gave the extras away) and reaped a small but yummy handful of berries last year.  Imagine my delight when my strawberry plants made more strawberry plants… I mean hey – who doesn’t like free stuff right?

So I began this growing season with 2 overly full raised boxes of plants… and this was after pulling out most of those daughters that made an attempt at setting up housekeeping outside along the edges of the boxes.

Lessons learned… DO NOT LET YOUR STRAWBERRIES BE IN CONTROL.  Oh sorry, was I yelling?  There is probably a correlation to that whole mother-daughter thing… somebody has to keep the rules and rein in the wild daughters.  So I’m going to be putting my mother hat gardening hat on and pulling on my gloves and getting ruthless about the rules and keeping order.  I’m going to be making up a new bed later this summer and we will set up a new orderly community.  And then I’m putting my foot down and yanking out anyone who doesn’t cooperate.

Below you see my freezer… it contains 10 half pint jars of Strawberry Freezer Jam.  It also contains in excess of 109 cups of crushed strawberries in various containers and bags.  AND 24 plus cups of frozen whole berries…

Yes there are indeed 4 cartons of ice cream there… how do you think I’m using up the crushed berries that haven’t made it into the freezer?  Over ice cream, yogurt, and bananas… and I’ve been giving them away.

My sister came over the other day… she asked if she could have some strawberries.  I told her she could have what ever she wanted to pick… but I wasn’t helping.  So she went home with a bunch… probably between 6 and 8 quarts.

And we also had to pick cherries…

but the bugs and birds had been feasting already.  The Engineer and I picked for us and I told my sister she could keep whatever she picked.  After tossing the bad ones on the ground I still ended up with 3 overflowing 2 quart containers before I said I quit.  After pitting and trimming bad spots I made 2 batches of Spicy Cherry Jam on Saturday.  The remaining cherries are in my dehydrator – um getting dried out… LOL

And then there is this tree with a smaller darker cherry… should be ready in a day or two… and another tree behind this that will be ready a week or so later I think.

 

Make them stop… make them all stop…  LOL