Strawberries in the east garden
I am writing this post with the intent to give hope to other amateur gardeners. This is probably the worst gardening year I have ever had. I have completely lacked enthusiasm, the weather hasn’t been too cooperative, weeds are starting to get out of control and whatever I have planted has gone in late.
A couple of years ago, a fellow gardener donated some extra strawberries from his garden to me. I received them in a 5 gallon bucket and dutifully put them in the ground in the garden on the east side of our property near the house. I love fresh strawberries and I hate weeds and I thought this would be the perfect way to have my cake and eat it too. They are thriving despite the rather brutal weather conditions we’ve had here: wind and frigid temperatures in the winter and drought in the summer.
At the time I planted these, there were five scraggly plants at the bottom of the bucket that I didn’t have the heart to throw away, so I threw them into our south garden in an empty spot without much hope they would survive. Out of the five, only one made it, but here is what it looked like this morning.
Strawberries and weeds
Look at what that one pathetic plant has turned into! It is now a force the weeds must reckon with! I must confess that I share this picture with shame. This garden has been seriously neglected. On the other hand, it has been interesting to observe just how productive it is with absolutely no help from me. This is the second year that we have had volunteer lettuce and chives. I think I’ve put about an hour’s worth of weeding in this year, just to give the lettuce a little room.
Volunteer lettuce and chives
So, I have discovered that with almost no effort, I will have lettuce and chives from my garden this year, that because the strawberries are taking over, I won’t need to weed as much, and that the weeds which used to be the bane of my garden have now yielded to a new ground cover yielding delicious surprises. Moral of the story? You may give up on your garden, but it may not give up on you!
Hidden surprise
The City Girl Farmer 