Still feeling under par.
This blessed flu is lingering, muzzy head and lethargic.
Just a quick hour grabbing a few salad leaves and onions plus yet another cucumber then to the strawberry bed.
Strawberries
For a first year the strawberries are doing well. Quite a few fruits, large and juicy. Unlike supermarket strawberries which are designed to bounce if dropped and sit on the shelf looking good, the strawberries you grow yourself are for taste. Yummy.
I’ve allowed some of the runners to root and these will be transplanted to fill in gaps. The rest of the runners were cut off to push energy into the fruit. You are supposed to remove flowers in year one to allow the plants to establish but the productive ones have established well so ignore that!
Horsetail
Despite the chemical blitz with Amicide last year, the weed from the dark side keeps popping up. The weed on the paths is doing no harm and will get re-sprayed except that the butternut squash has turned into some monster plant trying to take on the whole plot and growing over the path.
The horse tail (or mares tail) in the strawberry bed is a different problem. There seem to be lots of broken bits of root that are springing back to life. I’m getting these out as best I can. The light soil in the bed makes this easier. I think I can win against it in the bed just by attentive digging. Chemicals are out unless I move the strawberries, which I don’t want to do.
Web Site
I’ve been looking at putting more onto the site and making a few structural changes in the back end. Working when fuzzy seems to result in many obscure error messages so maybe a task to leave for a few days.
The best method I have found for controlling Marestail is to wait until they have grown to about 4-6 inches tall then just pull them as close to the ground as possible. Bag and burn later. This method works as the roots put all their energy into the shoots this will kill the root system. No chemicals also quick and easy.