MORE FARMING / CUCUMBERS AND MORE STRAWBERRIES

Well, I did a little bit more farming today and some of it was quite interesting. I'll start off with the cucumbers and get to the "interesting" part second. Now because the cucumbers are viney, I purchased another container to set on top of the fence. That way instead of the vine taking up a lot of room in my back area (as you can see on the right, theres not a lot of room)I can have it growing downward on the fence and attach it for support if necessary.

The first thing we went ahead and did is to make sure the drainage holes are in the container. We just took the drill and drilled thru the plastic. Once that is done you are ready to put the soil in the container. Fill it almost to the top because once you start watering it, the soil will become more compact. I just take the container a couple of times while I am filling it and tap it on the ground so as to pack it a little tighter. Iam planting everything this year in natural outdoor potting soil. Part of the plans for the yard are to build a compost and make my own composting soil. I'm looking forward to that. By the way, that is my dog Makenna on the left making sure the holes are being drilled correctly.

The end result is what you see on the right. And underneath that picture you can see that I have it sitting on top of the fence next to the strawberries. There are a total of 5 plants in that pot and as they start growing some will do better than the others and I will thin them out. If everything goes good they will all take and I will have a heck of a lot of cucumbers. But what could be better than being able to pick a cucumber everyday throughout the summer along with some tomatoes and you have a tomatoe and cucumber salad with some vinegrette. Ummm ummm good.

Now water your cucumber plants only in the morning so that the soil is not wet overnight because this can cause the plant to rot. So you want to make sure your pots have adequate drainage. Make sure to plant in full sun and in about 50 - 55 days you will have yourself some tasty, crunchy cucumbers. More on the cucumbers as they grow.

Now, for the interesting part of my farming today. The other days while I was out picking up the cucumber plants, I decided to pick up some more strawberries. I want to be able to have so many strawberries that I can make a cake or something with them.  So instead of buying more plants, I picked up this package, the one you see right below. I actually thought there were 10 little plants in there. Was I surprised when I opened it and this is what was there.

Soooooooooo, we just followed the instructions on the back of the package, we made a wide hole in the dirt, put the strawberries in, covered it and gave it water. So this is new for me. I've never seen anything like this. I would be interested to see if anyone else has grown strawberries from a pkg like this and how it went. I'm not sure if I'm going to get strawberries from it this year or not.