Detaching from the Mothership

I've been getting a lot of search hits about strawberries lately, so I thought I would update you on the progress of my strawberry babies.

For one thing, I actually read a book on strawberries, and it said the best sets were from the first two plants along the runners. Fortunately, I had potted mostly only the first set, and for one or two long runners, the second. A couple of days ago I nosed around in the pots and saw that there were roots, so I snipped the runners, and also removed any unused runners, because the mother plant was looking silly. I will be trimming off any future attempts at runners.

I'm going to have to figure out some kind of permanent placement for the strawberries one of these days: maybe a place in the ground. Because at the moment I've got a bunch of strawberries in little pots, and a bunch of strawberries in a big pot, and they're just sort of plunked in the middle of the garden as if that made any sense. Unplanned plants! Aie!

Oh, and on the fruit theme: the quinces are looking very nice, starting to lose their fuzz:

We're down to two, from the five I left on the tree. Not sure what happened to most of the others: I know one of them was lost to the midsummer fruit drop (when fruit trees jettison some of their fruit to better serve the remaining crop). It's exciting, although of course quince is not exactly a fruit you chow down on in great quantities, given that it is hard as a rock and often quite unpleasant to eat fresh (though this variety is allegedly edible in that state). But still: first crop. Exciting.

Technorati Tags: fruit, gardening, plants, propagation, strawberries, trees

posted by ayse on 08/18/06