Yesterday I picked my first organic grown strawberry of the season. We
have had a wet and
cool spring and summer so far. I have not even unpacked my air-
conditioners yet and if it
keeps up the way it has been, I may not need air conditioning this
year. Much like a Pinatuba
Volcano summer of the early 1990s.

Anyway, I cannot stress enough the importance of having strawberries
in large pots so
that they are easily maintained as far as weeding. Strawberries
planted in the ground
are fated to die from the weeds. But strawberries planted in pots are
easily weeded
and watered and easily moved to more sunlight. The fate of my prior
strawberries
was weeds and shading out from growing apricot trees and finally one
day of horse
and donkey ate them remainder.

Strawberries in pots are controllable. I have hundreds of berries
coming and only
starting with 38 plants. I have vast numbers of runners coming.

Also the onions and the chives do well in pots. Anything that is going
to be
in competition with grass and weeds is fated to die.

Now I keep passing the Gooseberries and tempted to try one and as
always they are
not yet ripe. I think Gooseberries are one of the best fruits kept
secret. I sometimes buy
a can of gooseberries in the store but they are no match for fresh
gooseberries.

As far as the pollination and lack of honeybees. Well the warmer
weather brought more
of them out. The cherry trees were pollinated but if they are smaller
in number as compared
to if the bees had been available earlier in Spring. One of the
reasons the apricots are few
is because of the low numbers of bees present in early Spring. So the
bee-die-off is affecting
fruit harvests in a large scale. I have seen only 3 bumblebees to
date, 2 on my clover patches
and one near the strawberries peonies.

Lately I have been frantically trying to help the asparagus from
falling over. So I build cages
made of old wood pallets. I found the wire cages do not fit without
damaging and that simple
wires are not enough support.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

Archimedes Plutonium wrote:

Lately I have been frantically trying to help the asparagus from
falling over. So I build cages
made of old wood pallets. I found the wire cages do not fit without
damaging and that simple
wires are not enough support.

Every year I seem to run into this problem of asparagus falling over
and a nuisance
in walking around or trying to mow around. But I think I got it licked
this year. I get
old flimsy wood pallets and cut them into four smaller square pieces.
I like the flimsy
pallets for they are easier to cut into 1/4 sections. Then I take two
of these four
sections for a bunch of asparagus. I grab a hold of the bunch and
stand them
upright strait and then lean one of the sections on one side and the
other section
on the other side and with two small wires, I wire together the
sections. This leaves
almost no space for the asparagus stalks to move around for they are
tight against
the wood sides of those 2 sections. And they are easy to take down
since only
2 wires hold them together.

Now some may say a row of asparagus bounded by wood sections looks
unsightly
to them. And I would say that the falling over of asparagus is more
unsightly and
a nuisance in mowing.

Time it takes me to cut into 4 sections a wood pallet about 5 minutes
and the time
it takes me to fasten 2 pallets to a bunch of asparagus is about 2
minutes. So 7 minutes
in all to solve a bunch of asparagus. And the sections are reusable in
coming years. And
when the sections deteriorate I simply add them to the wood pile to
burn in the woodstove.


Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

About 1/2 of the wood pallet cages are failing to do the job. So I am
going to take all of them
down and cut them for fire wood for winter.

I kind of suspect asparagus wants to fall over so its seeds and spread
further from the roots.

Some of the stalks are held in place by the "morning glory vine, or
bind weed". Maybe I ought to
wait for mornimg glory to climb and then snip it at the base when it
gets too much and
use the weed to support the asparagus.

I want something quick, easy, effective.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

I am returning to my old method of fencing the row of asparagus. And
for individual patches
I am modifying heavy duty tomato cages, where I cut the rings and then
fit the stalks inside
and then wrap a fence around the cage. I should have done this earlier
when I let them go to
seed before they branched out so that the cage did not need to be cut
and when the ground
was wet and softer.

I kind of suspect that Nature designed asparagus to lean over and fall
to the ground to
cast the seed further away.

Now on two patches I am experimenting with bind-weed or some call it
morning glory,
or creeping-jenny weed. Trouble with it though, the asparagus is too
much shaded.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

The only reasonable solution for asparagus is to use tomato cages in
Springtime, after harvesting the
asparagus, let the new shoots grow and confine them in a tomato cage.
While the ground is still moist
in Spring should be easy to apply the cage.

I hate mowing around falling down asparagus plants.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies