Brown Thumbs

Gardening can be humbling. For example:

The key lime tree I kept alive all winter

Darn near killed it with too much fertilizer. This photo was taken back in May.

Shown today clinging for life and slowly putting on new growth.

Strawberry update

The last time I wrote, we were sobbing into our gardening gloves while we carefully dug up every strawberry plant in our berry patch... just as they all started flowering. Our strawberry ordeal has finally come to an end with tentative results:

Our strawberries all dug up with June bearing on the left and ever-bearing on the right

This was day #1 of digging in order to fix the house foundation.

Day #2 and installing a 2nd sump pump in our basement

Eeeek!

They did a great job putting everything back together, so all I had to do was start planting again

Two weeks later and the plants are definitely worse for the wear, but the strawberries look like they just might survive the whole ordeal. We might just have a crop after all! 

Garden Heartbreak

Today was the saddest day of my gardening career.

(Not to be too dramatic, or anything)

Just as my strawberry patch started to bloom...

I had to dig it all up.

With some help from my husband

We got it all dug up (June bearing on the left, ever bearing on the right) in an afternoon.

On Monday we will be having people come dig up this area to fix the house foundation on this side. Our basement walls are caving in and we can't risk another flood in the unpredictable Midwest.

I know the strawberries will perk back up next year, and we are planning on expanding the area (yay!) but it really is heartbreaking to yank them up right when they're so full of potential. Especially after we worked so hard on the strawberry bed last year. I might be a little too sentimental about this whole thing...

In a way, I'm okay with this for one reason - I'll be able to update in a few weeks to let y'all know if the plants survived and actually produced anything. I could not find a single resource online blog or otherwise to tell me if a strawberry harvest could survive this kind of thing. Stay tuned.

Hand-me-down woes

Beware: even though hand-me-downs rarely have intact wash instructions (or size labels for that matter), this does not mean that you can ignore common sense. Lay flat to dry, or everything in the dryer will need to be re-washed. Twice.

Also, pitch the trashy clothes with glued on glitter before you even bother washing them.

April garden progress

We've been working like crazy outside these days. We finally dug up all our undesirable bushes.

This was three gnarly bushes covered in a layer of rocks instead of mulch.

Now it's blackberries!

The potatoes my baby girl planted a while back are going strong

Potatoes and onions

Onions and soon to be corn mixed in with my wedding mums (hehehe!)

And a muddy flower child. Gotta love it.

Spring flowers

I'm feeling really impressed with myself after all my bulbs came up. Like reeeally impressed. I have the gardens of a grown up these days! I can't wait for the garden season to really kick in.

Planting Apple Trees

I've been absent from the blog, but working hard outside. I'll have lots of fun things to show off once things really take off in the garden.

For now, here's today's project. One full sized jonagold apple and two semi dwarf fuji apple trees.