Strawberries, Snakes And Puppies

In the words of the great George Takei; Oh my...

Our strawberries are going crazy this year. I have eaten a bunch out of hand and Dara has collected a couple bowls like this so far. There are still hundreds of strawberries that will be ripe in the next couple days. Plus, I just bought 75 more strawberry plants.

This is the Common Northern Water Snake or Nerodia sipedon. This guy was crossing my neighbors driveway, probably going to his backyard pond. It is non-venomous and will leave you alone if you leave it alone. Not all water snakes are poisonous. One easy way to tell them apart is; the heads of venomous water snakes are broad and distinctively larger than their neck. Also, venomous water snakes have vertical pupils, non-venomous water snakes have round pupils.

This is the Common Southwest Ohio Lake Pup. You can distinguish it from other species by its bright orange doggy life-vest, complete with carry handle.

Higgs only tried to jump into the lake a few times. We can't wait to take him backpacking!

Serviceberry and The Rambunctious Raspberry

Our Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea) is leafing out and will be flowering soon. The flowers will turn into blueberry like berries in the summer. This is a great shrub and will grow into a tree if given the right conditions. It has been known to reach over 60 ft in height. I plan on putting more Serviceberry in the front yard, which I am slowly turning into a food forest. 

I bought 6 flats of strawberries at the local box store on clearance last year. They are apparently very cold hardy because I did not mulch them at all. They came through the winter looking this good. 

Here are some bunching onions that had no problem overwintering in one of our raised beds. I got some egyptian walking onion seed this year and plan on letting it go in the yard. 

We love leeks. These two did just fine through the winter. A quick tip: when you go to harvest leeks, green onions or celery just cut the plant off at ground level, leaving the roots and the bottom of the plant in the ground. In the case of leeks, you will see the rings turn green and start to push up. This will eventually grow into another leek for you. You can do this many times. I am not sure how many, but I have not had one not grow back yet.

Thyme is a very hardy perennial. I am going to move it out of this raised bed and give it a permanent home nearby. We made the mistake of planting some perennials in our raised beds that would be better suited for annual food crops. 

This is horseradish. I ate some last year and it is very spicy. If you really want to process a lot of horseradish you should use a food processor to shred it and then change the blade out to puree the shredded root. Add salt and vinegar and you will have some wonderful horseradish. This can be stored in a sterile jar in the fridge for up to three months. 

We inherited a thornless red raspberry plant from our good friends Mike and Heather. This thing went crazy in their backyard and they were tired of cutting it back. They had a huge pile of canes they cut down in the corner of their yard. I have planted it in an area that I want it to go crazy. I can't wait to get some raspberries. This picture was taken four days after I planted it. I don't think they were exaggerating about its vigour. 

Strawberry Hill

So Dara says "how many strawberry patches do we need?" My answer "all of them".

I am getting good at turning over sod. I put a bag of compost on top of the over-turned grass.

I bought these strawberry flats on clearance at the local big box store for $1.00 a piece. 

I am a sucker for a deal.

Here is the oddly focused finished product. We now have one large strawberry hill a very long strip of strawberries and this smaller hill. And yes, we need more!

The harvest recap

Hi everyone!!! So much has happened we haven't been able to post in a while. First of all,
as most everyone knows now, we are engaged (post to come on the ring)!! Yay! Second,
we have been installing our own wood floor (post to come) which is taking quite a long
time. Third, Patrick is officially a volunteer fireman, w00t! And lastly— whew—we are now
on the Paleo diet which means learning to cook lots of interesting meals (hopefully
some posts to come on that as well).

So on to the post. I realize we showed lots of pics of the garden and the work but not a lot of what we got out of it. So here's a few harvest pics from July to now and the unveiling of the potato box.

Sorry for the poor picture. Going clockwise from the bottom that's
Kale, Swiss Chard, Amaranth and Lambs Quarter. There was
enough Amaranth and Lambs Quarter to make 2 weeks worth of

dinners but we wasted most of it... you get tired of eating the same
thing (plus the Amaranth was slightly bitter) but at least we know
we COULD go that long without buying food.

Best watermelon I've ever eaten.

Dragon carrots. Still have some of these in the garden.

This was a good week. We still have lots of leeks in the yard
and we just finished off what peppers we had harvested. There
were a few bags full of them. Wasn't that interested in the ground
cherries. Need to figure out what to do with them next year.

Let me know if you have a suggestion!

The Potato Box!!! We ran out of straw early though and didn't
get more. You can see it looks low.

This looks promising though...

Wha...?

FAIL

Me thinks this is a seed potato.

You don't eat potatoes on
Paleo anyway... sometimes things just work out.