Sara's Garden MarketSustainable Living, Gardening, Flowers, and Food

Hi everyone,

As you know I have a very small strawberry patch. 🙂 Last year it kind of went a little crazy and sent out little shoot off plants all over the garden! (This is a good thing.) So this Spring when those new plants came up I dug them up very carefully and put them back into the strawberry patch. They did not suffer for the transplanting at all and in fact they are going crazy again! I have TONS of blossoms woohoo!!!! They are so happy in there. I already have the bird netting up so that we can greedily have all the juicy berries to ourselves.

Here is a picture from right after I transplanted the babies:

And here is one from today – approximately 3-4 weeks after the one above:

Yeay strawberries!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you have any questions please comment below – or start a thread in the forum.

Thanks for stopping by!

-Sara

Some of my plants from last year are coming up already outside!
It has been warmer, but is still quite cold. I have noticed that we have had several nights that have not gotten to freezing though. They have gotten close, but still we are having very warm nights. Here are some pictures of Strawberry plants and Onion bulbs that have come up green and started to lift out of the mud and muck!

So I guess I better get a move on those seeds inside!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

-Sara Murray

My daughter Maddie suggested that we can use the indoor garden to propagate the strawberry patch!!!!!!!! What a genius idea!

As you may or may not know strawberry plants only produce fruit the first or second year. They send out shoots (like a vine) and plant new plants them selves each season, and those are what give next year’s fruit. In Minnesota, and in a very small area in our garden we only get a handful or so of delicious (and I mean delicious) strawberries each season.

So today at breakfast she says, “Mom, we can have more strawberries if you dry one strawberry, and take those seeds and make plants over the winter.” WOW! Yes, we can!

So, (of course you need to start off with non-GMO and non-Hybrid seeds in order to get plants that come from seed correctly and don’t mutate themselves!) here is a great link for how to store your own strawberry seeds and sow them: http://www.ehow.com/how_2106637_preserve-strawberry-seeds.html

The trick is to find any strawberry plants or seeds that are non-GMO and non-Hybrid! Mine are coming true to plant, so I think I have a good batch. I have yet to try preserving and sowing the seeds though. I tried to google non-gmo strawberry seeds and plants and the general consensus is that there aren’t any. 🙁

(stop reading now because what’s below this is a major downer!)

Thanks for stopping by!

-Sara Murray

(This is a huge tragedy, and if it continues to happen with more and more food seeds we will see the complete destruction of food as we know it and it may lead to a great starvation on this planet! So, please whenever possible use heirloom seeds and buy non-gmo produce and seeds if you can.

50 years ago my daughter and I wouldn’t have had to think twice about if the seeds of any fruit or vegetable would produce more of that fruit or vegetable. Of course they would! Now… you never know.But that’s another blog post all together!) between this and the bees big business and big agriculture can really get you down…

I planted some strawberry plants a few years ago and all we ever got was one single strawberry from them. NOW they are very happy and producing many berries! They are so delicious. Store-bought strawberries are NOTHING compared to the flavor you get from growing your own.

I have them in the center of my vegetable garden (along with the other animal favorite, broccoli) to try to keep them away from other mammals who may want some. I also put bird netting up just in time! We harvested 3 berries yesterday and they were so very good.

I can’t wait to get more off these plants. I wonder if they will keep producing all season. That would be awesome.

I might actually have to get some more of these plants if they are going to be so tasty and so happy and easy to keep.

Thanks for stopping ~ Sara

I got the majority of my outdoor weeding done yesterday!

The vegetable garden was full of thistles and other odd looking plants I didn’t want in there. I also found a whole patch of volunteer tomatoes! They will need thinning so now I have a serious amount of tomato plants! The two strawberry plants are very happy and already have several large flowers. The radishes are doing great and the peas are as well. The onions are just up and about 2 inches above the ground now.

I didn’t do anything to my “knock-out” roses over the winter to protect them and they did just great. I even have a few buds already! I had to prune them back in to shape, but they are a lot larger this year. Roses are very hardy. I recommend them to anyone looking for an easy to care for perennial.

I also have babies breath, mallow root, and pink yarrow perennials in the vegetable garden. I will try to get some pictures up later on!

In the flower bed there were also thistles, and I have discovered that chives are thriving through out the entire garden out there!!! I need to put a can around the root ball and make sure I pick the tops before they seed so they don’t spread further. If that doesn’t work I will need to get rid of it. Nothing like a flower bed that smells strongly of chives!

Stay tuned for my green house plans as they have changed dramatically!

Thanks for stopping by!