Strawberry Patch

This was the year to start our strawberry patch! I have been wanting to do this for ages, but the timing was never right. A friend of mine gave me her family's inside information on strawberries from a guru named E. Gordon Wells, Jr.

He suggests planting them in early April, and the variety he likes best is Albion, and ever bearing variety that produces first in the spring and latest in the fall. He says it produces large berries abundantly, instead of small berries with lots of seeds. We went on a field trip to Cooks Greenhouse in Orem to find them. 

They had them in flats, but the nice guy at Cooks gave me a little lesson in bare root strawberries and suggested I buy them 25 bare roots per pot, which is much more cost effective.

The wagons were so fun. That place is a gardener's paradise! Everything in the greenhouses is already blooming and just tempting you to bring something home. We spent a good hour wandering and admiring.

They don't look like much, but each pot really did have 25 baby bare root strawberries banded together. 

We weeded and prepared our plot under the fruit trees. The soil was amended last year with some mink manure, so we didn't add anything this year. Mr. Wells suggests adding peat moss and sulfur, but the Cook's guy told me to try what we've got and if the strawberries start turning yellow, we can always add sulfur or ammonium sulfate later. We have yet to get drip lines to each plant, so for now we are hand watering.

Sometimes gardening makes me nervous because you spend a lot of money on the front end, and just hope and pray that things are "fruitful"! But spring is full of promise.... we shall see!

Field Trip: BYU-I Greenhouses

I recently visited my sisters in Rexburg and got to see where Emily, another horticulture major, spends her time! The BYU Idaho horticulture department has a great program and I have heard so much about Emily's work, so it was awesome to see it in person. This coming weekend is the bridal show in which she will contribute an interpretive floral design and lots of bridal work. That's what I really wish I could see... but maybe she'll agree to be a guest blogger next week and tell us all about it! :) Good luck Em!

This is the "Jungle Room." It feels so exotic!

This is where the houseplants live. Em waters and cares for certain assigned plants that will go toward plant sales.

I love this picture of the propagation tables. It reminds me of my greenhouse classes back in the day.

I think the coolest part of the tour was the tomato hydroponic greenhouse! The guy that cares for them showed us around and answered all our questions. It is such a neat way to grow tomatoes! I thought it would be fun to share an overview of the process... didn't know you were going to get a lecture did ya? :) Well, keep reading, you might learn something.

"Hydroponics is the cultivation of plants in a liquid nutrient solution rather than in soil: soiless growth of plants. The plants are germinated in Rockwool cubes and when they reach 6 inches in height they are transplanted into the buckets which are filled with perlite. The perlite and rockwool have no nutritional value. They only aid in giving stability to the root system and retaining moisture.

The plants are then given the needed nutrients via the injection system in the greenhouse. This computer controlled nutrient injection system will turn on each half hour during day light and irrigate for approximately 2.2 minutes, giving the plants steady amounts of the liquid nutrient solution.

Fifteen 1000 watt grow lights are located above the plants. These turn on in the evening and run until midnight and then again in the early morning hours of the day. By increasing the photo period of the plants we hope to increase production." (from BYU-I info sheet)

I thought the system ingenious. After the vines grow horizontal for a few feet, they hook them up with ropes, pulleys, and cords and they grow vertically. It was quite a sight! The best part was we got to sample some vine-ripened, garden fresh tomatoes in the middle of January! The students who eat from campus food services probably don't even know the difference... but they're lucky.