Strawberries

This is this year's largest strawberry harvest. They are cute and picked right from the bed, still a bit warm from the sun.

I have about a dozen strawberry plants and they produce several handfuls of berries over a course of few weeks. It's more than other years when deer and rabbits ate strawberry leaves and fruit. This spring I put a small chicken wire fence around them and it has helped.

Still, I think this is the last spring for strawberries in my garden. As much as I like the idea of growing my own berries, none of the plants I have bear fruit that is sweet and they all are small. Perhaps I should investigate other retailers and try a new variety. But with the room for my garden being so limited, this might be one plant that I will give up in the future.

Blueberry Bushes

My order of three blueberry bushes came last week.They have been planted and I can start dreaming about a day when we'll be able to pick our own fresh berries. Considering that the plants are really small, it will be a few years, I guess.

If facing North, Spartan is on the left, Chandler in the middle and Blueray is on the right.
Blueberries like acidic soil. I've never tested mine. A friend suggested to add pine needles around the bushes and that should take care of acidity. Good organic solution! I'll need to swipe some pine needles in our neighborhood church parking lot... oh, the things I'm ready to do for the garden.

Fig and Lithops

I ordered two new plants and the came recently. To the left is a sapling of a dwarf fig variety 'Petite Negra'. In the small pot are lithops, commonly called living stones.

I read about this fig in a magazine and it sounded just perfect for my front garden. I learned about lithops in another blog and got very curious about this weird plant. It will be very interesting to see it grow.
Lithops close up. For a reference, the clay pot they came in is 2 inches wide.