First, Mr. Stevia just looks great - the new leaves on the end of every stem are getting bigger and look healthy. That whole plant has such small and delicate limbs, it doesn't look strong at all but the green leaves look fine.
The big “T” Italian squash in the tomato barrel (on the rolling plant caddy rightly made for me) is almost three feet tall and more new growth will be out by tomorrow. It is perfect. I say a prayer nothing gets it. If this one is successful, I expect all of you to grow/eat this squash for spring/summer/ and leave some for winter squash like Butternut squash. Why would anyone grow any other squash if this one resists those moths/borers? I'll wait until it actually has squash without being killed before victory will be declared.
All the Mortgage Lifter tomato plants are getting tall and the body of the plants are larger and look healthy - I think there are eight out there, 3 in the big tomato container, and the rest, each in a five gallon grow bag.
The sweet potato plants look fine in the ten gallon grow bag. The plant stems and leaves flow out of the bag onto the deck.
The bush green beans I transplanted out of the paper cups, two each in five gallon grow bags, are growing taller faster, maybe 8 inches tall now.
The 25 strawberry plants are lush, and I have to get them out of the tiny cups and plant them in something soon. I think I'll look for a square planter of some kind to put them in. I'll take a look at what my Walmart and Lowes has on line that is actually in my stores. Bags are not going to work as they need more surface area to spread out but they are not the kind with runners.
I also need to plant the turnips and some more of the veggies growing out of the paper cups and transplant that other “T” Italian squash - don't know where it is going. I guess I have to fill the other big tomato planter and that takes a number of bags of potting soil mix. It can go in there with other veggies.
Yes, rightly, I need more potting soil mix - have to get that when I get something for the strawberries.
greeneyes, I may kill the strawberries because the instructions call for all that hay and crap and later all that mulching stuff. Mine will be in potting soil mix and I'm not mulching in containers. I can keep them from freezing easily if it were to get that cold here like once or twice this winter. Maybe I should get square containers that are not huge so I can move them around easier. Not sure what I'm going to do with them in that case but I can keep them from freezing.
The three flowering plants I bought and transplanted into larger plastic pots, haven't wilted - they look fine sitting out in the dirt garden and that's after I cut their roots to pieces like the lady said and figured they would die from that mistreatment.
I'll check the mixture of flower seed tomorrow that I spread on the ground when I planted the walking onions. I'll take a look in the bed of walking onions but don't expect to see anything. Tomorrow the dirt in that area will be dryer because it's wet now.
I still don't trust the squirrels to not eat my plants during the night or early morning. I'm putting row cover over the plants on the deck that are not tomatoes every evening. I pull netting over the tomatoes every evening. The point of this long post is this:
NO PLANT AT THIS TIME IS GETTING MURDERED BY SQUIRRELS OR BIRDS OR INSECTS! ALL THE PLANTS ARE BEAUTIFUL!
LOL. Your thumb is getting greener by the hour! Hubby doesn’t do much with the berries. He gets a good soil mix. Plants them in the pyramid planters, and pinches the blossums off the first year, so the plants efforts will go into strong establishment of the plant.
Just before the first frost, he covers them with a mound of hay, which he takes off when danger of frost is past. Most of the crop is done by end of June, though with everbearing we sometimes get a small fall crop too.
Look for, or make, something like this. Sized for 25 plants, and easy to put netting over. Lots of them out their, priced from cheap to ridiculously expensive.
http://robj98168.blogspot.com/2010/04/diy-three-tier-strawberry-planter.html