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