I also bustled around the yard and ran the mower over some late invasive cool season grass and mulched up a few leaves in the process. I do like a lawn with a nice even trim, don't you? I also realized there were a couple of hoses that needed draining, the purple martin houses needed to be cleaned out and brought indoors, and my pack rat-bait stations near the house were empty. All the usual and none too soon as, sometime between the strident warnings about new COVID variants and the apocalypse, the frantic media voices tell me that winter is coming. Sure, except for the 70ºF temperatures predicted this week. Those strawberry plants must think I'm nuts and just cut off their sunlight.
Also completed was the annual "over the rivers and through the woods" to our Indiana past trek of Thanksgiving, in our case the "over-the-river" being the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and the "through-the-woods" was of the forested Illinois and Indiana I-70 corridor. A few days gone in a cloudy and colder Indiana landscape where it actually even rained one day, and Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I were never so glad as to come back Friday into this gorgeous sunset, occurring just as we made those last few miles through the Flint Hills to home. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home....err Kansas.Though an old gardener, I am but a young blogger. The humor and added alliteration are free.
Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts
Sunday, November 28, 2021
Bedding Down & Tidying Up
ProfessorRoush accomplished several main fall chores last weekend and during the week. Last Sunday was a windy, but pleasant and sunny day which I took full advantage of in a fit of tidiness. Of highest importance, I covered the strawberries with a nice thick bed of straw to protect those tender buds from any further frosts and freezes. Last winter I neglected it as the bed was in poor condition anyway, but this year, with 50 new plants out, I thought a nice golden blanket was in order for the patch. It looks so nice and cozy and protected now, don't you think?
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
It's A Bit Early....
These Burpee special, 'Berries Galore' strawberries (read it from the label) have graced three pots all summer long under the edge of Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorite Redbud tree near the driveway, there always to provide me a few tasty treats as I wander in and out of the house. I enjoy them and their slightly tart taste despite the effort I put out all summer to keep them watered and alive in the burning sun of this Western exposure.
But, today, October 30, 2019, here they are, feeling the chill of winter in their first light snowfall, weeks early for this area of Kansas. In thirty years of living here, I can remember one snowfall on Halloween resulting in a very cold trick-or-treating effort with my young son in the mid-90's. There were none before or since.
Unfortunately, this will be the demise of these bright fushia-lipstick-pink blooms and the strawberries that would have developed from them. This weekend, I'll bring these pots into the barn where they can have a little protection but remain dormant for the winter. With a little luck, these berry plants will live to see another Spring for me.
And never fear, in regards to our larger garden strawberry bed, my pride and joy, I put it to bed for the season under a light blanket of straw just this weekend. Snug, happy, and deer-protected, I'm prepared for what I hope is a dynamite strawberry crop next May.
Monday, April 1, 2019
Taters and Ambrosia
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When the wind is coming from the north blowing south, that's a north wind, right? I've always been a little fuzzy on the exact meaning of a direction applied to wind. Well, today, it was blowing from the north to the south and I'm going to refer to it as a north wind, right or wrong.
I got home from work around 7:00 p.m. today, took a few minutes to rustle up some mac and cheese for the starving Mrs. ProfessorRoush, and around 7:30 I made it out to the garden for the imperative activity of planting the seed potatoes and raking the straw off the strawberries. Sixteen, well-scabbed, half-potatoes are now planted, hopefully happy in the cold and very wet earth. This calendar day (April 1st) is the latest I've ever planted potatoes. And, yes, I'm the proud owner of a few of those metal row stake/identifiers and I've painted them all wildflower blue like my garden benches.
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Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Can You See Me Now?
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Thus it was that this morning, while picking strawberries on my hands and knees, I didn't react at all when there was a rustling beneath the strawberry leaves and movement a few inches away from my hand. I didn't, in fact, even move my hand away. I had just picked strawberries from all over the area in question, so I figured that if it was finally time to encounter a scared and biting copperhead, it was just my turn. In actuality it was something else entirely. Can you find it in the picture at the upper right?
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Well, as much as I have plans to kill or trap the several adult rabbits that are eating my hosta and small shrubs presently around the house, I'll just leave these two babies alone. They aren't bothering the strawberries (as evidenced by my harvest today, pictured at the right), and they already lost their best chance at causing me a heart attack, so they can stay. At least until next year when they're fully grown and eating the baby roses and asian lilies.
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Round One; Advantage Me
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I've put my garden away for winter, for the most part, and I'm looking forward to a long winter's rest. One of my last chores, last weekend, was to replace a broken end-post on my vegetable garden's electric fence. My rejuvenated strawberry patch has flourished this year and, last week, it occurred to me how delicious that tender green patch of strawberry leaves looked next to all the browned grass in the acres and acres around it. Remembering the last time the patch looked so good, and remembering that the deer had, within weeks, chomped it down to the ground and destroyed the next season's strawberries, I resolved to immediately beef up my large-furry-rat defenses.
And yet this first morning, when I rose, I spotted the lone doe pictured at the top, from my kitchen window. She meandered across the garden, joined two others in transit, and all proceeded to walk to the garden and stare at the new setup, the lush smorgasboard just beyond their reach. Finally one reached up to the peanut butter, and then another, both reacting only slightly and then dejectedly moving away. I suppose I won the first round, but I'm disappointed that they didn't get knocked off their feet and make a more hasty retreat. More twine? More fence? Somehow, 25 quarts of homegrown strawberries at $4 a quart replacement value still seems worth it, don't you agree? All this wire and plastic, though, isn't helping my carbon footprint. Maybe it would be wiser to persuade my neighbor to take down his deer feeder. Or to fill it with moldy corn.
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Just in Time
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I was excited today to see that the Martin scouts have returned! This year, I have been ashamed to say, I never even took down the houses for winter, but now I'm glad they are already up, two weeks before the April 1st date that I usually bring them out of the barn.
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Strawberry Fields Forever
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To deflect any criticism about yet another post reflecting the intense love between a gardener and his faithful companion, we will feebly pretend instead that this blog entry is about my triumph over the fickle scarlet-skinned god of the strawberry patch. Because, really, that's what it is, a bragging post unmitigated by any trace of self-restraint, even while I know deep down that I'm depleting my gardening karma account and probably will soon be punished by a June freeze for my impudence.
NEWS FLASH: I HAVE HARVESTED HOME-GROWN STRAWBERRIES IN KANSAS!
Devoted readers of this blog know of my deep, life-long love for strawberries. You've endured my epic, all-out campaign to get a strawberry patch through the August heat and drought, the bitter winters, and the late spring freezes that define Kansas gardening. You have suffered through my purchase and erection of a shade house and my defensive measures and counterattacks against marauding deer. You have bravely endured the whimpers and the whining and the woeful wailing against the cruelties of nature and the Kansas Flint Hills. I have successfully spared you (till now) my agony during the past 3 weeks of cold, March-like temperatures and rains that have conspired to prolong ripening and increase rotting.
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Whatever. These are my strawberries, and, as Bella's twitching nose confirms, they are sweet and they are ripe and mouth-watering. For one season, for one year, I have grown strawberries!
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Sheaves of Miscanthus
♫Bringing in the Sheaves, ♪Bringing in the Sheaves, ♪ProfessorRoush Rejoicing Bringing in the Sheaves.♫
This was a glorious golden day here in northeastern Kansas. Gentle sun, mild wind, A mid-day high of 66ºF. Perfect for a work-starved gardener who was aching to get his hands into the dirt again. It was one of the spectacular dozen days we get here every year, the majority in early Spring, with two or three left for September. That's right, twelve perfect days a year is all I can count on here and one is already gone. Actually, at least three are gone because there were two great days this week that I missed entirely while I perfected my indoor fluorescent tan at work.
I was almost sidetracked today by an early morning veterinary emergency, but I was home by 11:30 a.m. and in the garden by noon. My first move was to uncover my formerly beautiful strawberry patch, praying that green budding strawberry plants would lay beneath the straw and deer droppings. And there they were, rumpled and a bit put out from missing several good days of sunshine, but seemingly game to get going. Since the ground was dry clay powder to the depth of 2-3 inches, I watered them, and surrounded the unsheathed shade house by a stretch of snow fence in an effort to keep the deer from sampling the new foliage. My strawberry dream is still intact, still safe despite the very real potential of late snows, marauding creatures, drowning rains, drought, and perhaps a plague of locusts.
You can see from the picture above that I also cut back the majority of my ornamental grasses, shortening the average height of my garden by half in a single afternoon. Tying each bunch into a sheave before cutting it off is a little trick I learned several years ago to help me keep the garden tidy (or, more truthfully, to keep Mrs. ProfessorRoush from complaining about my habit of strewing grass stems all over the garden). As an added bonus, seeing all those sheaves of grass standing and waiting to be cut touches an ancient spot buried deep in my psyche, connecting me to those first agriculturists who decided that grain might be a little tough to chew, but it was surely better than being trampled by a Mastodon. Indeed, Mastodons may be gone from Kansas, but the grasses and strawberries and I struggle on, rejoicing in each perfect golden day that we can..
This was a glorious golden day here in northeastern Kansas. Gentle sun, mild wind, A mid-day high of 66ºF. Perfect for a work-starved gardener who was aching to get his hands into the dirt again. It was one of the spectacular dozen days we get here every year, the majority in early Spring, with two or three left for September. That's right, twelve perfect days a year is all I can count on here and one is already gone. Actually, at least three are gone because there were two great days this week that I missed entirely while I perfected my indoor fluorescent tan at work.
I was almost sidetracked today by an early morning veterinary emergency, but I was home by 11:30 a.m. and in the garden by noon. My first move was to uncover my formerly beautiful strawberry patch, praying that green budding strawberry plants would lay beneath the straw and deer droppings. And there they were, rumpled and a bit put out from missing several good days of sunshine, but seemingly game to get going. Since the ground was dry clay powder to the depth of 2-3 inches, I watered them, and surrounded the unsheathed shade house by a stretch of snow fence in an effort to keep the deer from sampling the new foliage. My strawberry dream is still intact, still safe despite the very real potential of late snows, marauding creatures, drowning rains, drought, and perhaps a plague of locusts.
You can see from the picture above that I also cut back the majority of my ornamental grasses, shortening the average height of my garden by half in a single afternoon. Tying each bunch into a sheave before cutting it off is a little trick I learned several years ago to help me keep the garden tidy (or, more truthfully, to keep Mrs. ProfessorRoush from complaining about my habit of strewing grass stems all over the garden). As an added bonus, seeing all those sheaves of grass standing and waiting to be cut touches an ancient spot buried deep in my psyche, connecting me to those first agriculturists who decided that grain might be a little tough to chew, but it was surely better than being trampled by a Mastodon. Indeed, Mastodons may be gone from Kansas, but the grasses and strawberries and I struggle on, rejoicing in each perfect golden day that we can..
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Rats in the Berry Patch
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Mrs. ProfessorRoush directed me to run to get my camera to photograph the beautiful young maid, and so I did, only to return and find that the brazen hussy (I'm referring to the deer here, not Mrs. ProfessorRoush) was climbing through the currently unelectrified fence right before my camera lens (as seen at below left), and proceeding to sample my prized strawberry patch! So much for deer jumping over fences and obstacles; this doe was so well-fed and lazy that she thought she'd just push her way through.
My flash was going off automatically in the dim morning light for the first few photos, and it attracted the doe's attention (as seen in the first photo above), but did not deter it. Casting aside my awe and joy at this unexpected appearance of Nature in favor of the survival of my luscious strawberry future, I sprinted outside to shout and wave my arms at the invader.
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Preferring the peace and quiet of the prairie to the loudly antic and frantic hominid, both deer slowly ambled towards the bottoms, taking their time and occasionally glancing back to see if I was gone and they could return to a quiet meal. Shaking my fists and making "bang, bang" sounds didn't seem to hurry them up one bit, either.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Heavenly Shadeberries
Friends, I generally strive to not be a braggart bore. That is usually an easily-reached goal, because gardening in the Flint Hills doesn't allow me many opportunities for successful outcomes to brag about. But I must, I simply must, take this opportunity to show you my $1000 strawberry patch.
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I will, of course, also be worried all winter that I've jinxed myself by merely writing this bragging blog. I'll cover them with straw in a month and pray to the Winter God that he doesn't make it too cold in January. I'm going to leave the cover off until near harvest next year, and then I will place it on at the last moment so that I can savor the ripe strawberries in the shade (and perhaps keep the birds scared away). If you need me next June, either day or night, look for me lounging peacefully amidst the colors and scents of heaven, stuffed to the gills with bursting red fruit. I hope.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
A Shade Of Relief
It is astonishing what the presence of a mere high tunnel shade house does to the aura of a garden. It immediately feels like the garden is composed less of a series of beds plopped into the middle of prairie grass, and instead it promotes a sense of a purposeful and planned garden. Despite placement deep down into the vegetable garden and off to the side, its existence somehow balances the overall garden. "Here," it says, "is a thoughtful and determined gardener." Thank God, I was able to erect it well enough that it isn't askew and disclosing the gardeners complete desperation to fight the searing Kansas sun. I should also be thankful that I didn't erect a real greenhouse else I'd have delusions that I might someday become a decent gardener instead of a serial plant killer.
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Saturday, June 7, 2014
Made in the Shade
It's time to unveil the skeleton of a project which began on delivery of a large package last Wednesday. There, down in the vegetable garden. Do you see it? I'm not going outside on this rainy Saturday morning to give you a better view, but how about the closeup below? Sorry about the window screen in the way, but that's a frame for a shade house, amazingly and partially erected by yours truly.
By no means is this the end of my gardening week, either. Today, over 100 gardeners from Omaha are visiting my garden. They came down to Manhattan to see the KSU Gardens and ended up asking the Chamber of Commerce to visit a couple of "large" local gardens. My garden may not qualify as unique or educational, but "large" got me on the list. The garden, despite the waning roses and the long gone irises and peonies, is in about as good a shape as I've ever had it after a week of effort. And to top it off, tomorrow is the annual Manhattan Area Garden Show and I'm the roving photographer for it. My gardening week will end Sunday night, and for once I'll be glad to leave the garden and go back to paying work!
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