Oh my, was it chilly out there. We've seen a high of 41 degrees today, no sun, very damp and a refreshing little breeze adding to the shivers.
This is hubby loading some wood shavings from back in the wood working area for me to use to finish mulching the strawberry plants. Notice his wool hat AND hood? Yup. Bone-chillin' nasty out there.
I had mulched inbetween the rows of berries earlier but this morning finished putting shavings around each individual plant. I thought I was being wise and dressing warmly enough by putting on my wool winter hat, but soon decided to pull up my hood, too.
This is a bird's eye view of the strawberry patch completely mulched and ready for production! Although in truth, we're still two months away from ripe berries.The darker material you see on part of the field garden is compost hubby's spreading. He'll cultivate that in as soon as he can and then that area will be ready for planting . . . once we get past this latest predicted snow and warmer weather returns to the northwoods again.
9 comments:
I sure hope you went indoors for a nice hot cup o' tea. Your pictures and description of the weather made me shiver all the way over here in southern california!
If you're looking for your rain, we've got it! It's been drizzling for a few hours now. At least I get a bit of a break from pulling sod!!!
As always, your beds look marvellous! How many plants are in each bed (approx) and how big is your strawberry harvest? And what do you do with them -- eat fresh, freeze, preserve... or all of the above!
Hi, Beth - We worked outside until noon when we came in for a bowl of soup for lunch. Had a fire going in the wood stove and it felt so darned good, we both played hooky from work and sat in front of the fire with a hot drink and read for a couple of hours! How's that for decadence?
Hey, Fiona - Dang and drat. Still no rain here and we could still use it. Chicken Mama just told us that friends who came up today from Minneapolis said they drove through "a lot of snow!" It all seems to be south of us. Go figure.
We have approximately 120-125 strawberry plants in the whole patch. When the berries come in, we eat a lot of them fresh. I also make jam (hubby's favorite) and give jars of it as Christmas gifts. I dehydrate some (usually just one dehydrator full) to mix in our homemade granola. Chicken Mama, friends and neighbors get baskets of fresh berries, too. But the bulk I freeze to use over the winter in our smoothies or in plain yogurt or kefir. Last summer I put 20 quarts of berries in the freezer and as of today, we have 5 quarts left. So I can't say we ever have too many. And if we did, I don't know anybody who would turn down a basket of fresh strawberries, do you? :o)
41* was your high?? We're calling for about that at night this weekend. Oh, and windy with gusts up to 57mph!! No work on the garage again!
What a beautiful strawberry bed! Ours is about 6ft X 3ft..and I was excited about it! Weel, it will be bigger next year, we had plans for the raised bed but they stayed as plans to long so we'll have to wait a few more weeks till after harvest. Your in the 40's and we were 88 in SO Ind, today!
Your strawberry bed is huge! How was the weather last night? Any rain or snow to wake up to today?
Hey, Jody - Your area of the country is another one that's been getting STRANGE weather! Sorry you can't get more work done on the garage but no sense fighting winds like that!
Hi, Katie - What a divergence in temperatures, huh? But then you are down near the Banana Belt and we're the Frozen North!
Hey, Erin - Ya, we've always kept a large strawberry patch. But never have too many berries!
Going to go do a little post now on how our weather turned out yesterday/last night.
Beautiful! Lucky you to have all those wood shavings to use for mulch. Mulch is always a scramble project for me and there's never enough of it!
Really though, it's your garden way cart I'm envying. I used to have one but we had to leave it behind three moves ago. I still miss it, but can't quite get DH to pay the price of a new one!
Hi, Leigh - Our garden cart is starting to fall apart (wood is deteriorating) and we priced a new one a while ago. Severe sticker shock! We'll have to replace the wood on this one ourselves!
We have the cart and three wheelbarrows and use ALL of them constantly. Don't know what anyone would do with those oh-so-useful pieces of equipment.
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