The Farm thus far.....

We bought our house in August of 2013, and had big plans come the spring of 2014. Unfortunately we didn't get everything done that we wanted to get done in 2014, so somethings had to wait until spring of 2015. What we did get done in 2014 was we built a chicken coop and we own 13 chickens.

 

But that's not all that we accomplished in 2014, we put in a berry patch! We planted 2 blackberry bushes, 2 raspberry bushes, and 20 strawberry plants. My strawberry patch is a 64 sq. ft. strawberry bed. I went to Home Depot and bought 4x8 landscape timbers for my bed edging, then I went to the local nursery and purchased 4 bags of a compost called Cotton Burr. Cotton Burr is a compost that is very high in nutrients and a great soil conditioner (see: http://www.organic-gardening-for-life.com/cottonburr_compost.html for more information). I tilled up my 8x8 piece of ground, then threw in the cotton burr, and tilled in the cotton burr into the soil. After I planted my strawberries I made sure to cover the bed with a cedar mulch really well. You can use any mulch, or even straw, which is where the name "Straw"berries came from! I planted my 2 black berry bushes on one side of the strawberry patch, and my raspberry bushes on another side of patch. My strawberry plants seemed to be stout plants, they were running, and creating buds all over the place last year. Its hard to say if the cotton burr is the cause, but I'm sure it didn't hurt! I would recommend plucking the strawberry buds off of 1st year plants to obtain stronger roots. We did not do this, just for the mere fact its very hard to pluck the fruit that you've worked hard to grow, and Aiden was a huge fan of picking them and eating them right off the plants so we left them for him! I covered our strawberries with straw for the winter and I plan on pulling the straw about mid April. We will see if they survived our winter and if they will produce fruit this June! Our Blackberry and Raspberry bushes really took off last year, and we have a lot of new canes coming out of the ground, I'm hopeful that they will have no problem taking off this spring. We even had a few Raspberries come in last fall but like strawberries, as hard as it is to do, I would recommend plucking buds as they come on. Stay tuned to see if our berries will be a success this summer!!!!

 

 

 

Also....yes that is a scare crow. We had birds eating our strawberries, and Isla came up with this idea all on her own so we HAD to try it!!! It didn't really work, but I was proud of her for using her head!

 

 

And Isla picking the fruits of our labors!!