Planting Time-4/15

Today I planted the remaining 8 squares of strawberries. Each with 2 plants of the "All Star" June-bearing variety. I purchased them at the new Premier Farm & Ranch store outside of Raymore for a surprisingly great price of $3.75 for a container of 8 plants. Way beats the $2.75/plant I paid for the ever-bearers at WalMart. After closer inspection, I think each of those containers probably had 2-3 plants, but since they were in peat pots that I could just stick in the ground, I didn't notice. Most of them seem to have survived the heavy frost and snow, just look like they need a little time to perk back up. I'll get some straw to mulch this bed this week.

In the vegetable bed, I planted the first round of lettuce, spinach, carrots and onions. I'm staggering the planting of all of those seeds (except the onions) for a longer harvest time (i.e. 2-4 seeds per week or two for several weeks). Now that I have the "All New Square Foot Gardening" Book checked out from the library to look at the planting schedules, I could have started all these seeds sooner...but that's okay. BTW, how cool is it that the only tools I need to do all this are a little trowel and a pencil to mark my squares and poke holes? The planting medium really is a nice texture and has a great feel to it.

Eric and I have been brainstorming ideas to keep the bad bunnies out of the gardens. He used live traps a lot last year...we caught numerous bunnies and a few possums--yuk! We are going to try lining the picket fence bottom with chicken wire. Over the last 2-3 years (since we've had the wood fence) the bunnies have actually chewed portions of it off to make for a clean in/out escape to our back yard. We'll be replacing those posts when we put up the wire. Next time one of us gets our hair cut, we may save the trimmings to sprinkle around too...sounds bizaar to me, but guess the little varmints don't like hair. I still think I'll have to build 4x4' cages to surround the beds...have a feeling birds will be liking the berries too.

Tra-la-tee-da. Good to be out in some warm sunshine and seems amazing that the whole yard was blanketed in snow yesterday...only remains of that are a little mound in front that used to be a snowman--he was holding tulips, by the way.