May is the most exciting and enjoyable month of my year I think. Watching God create for us each year makes me so appreciative of the world around us. On the right here are the most healthy strawberry plants I have ever had. They stand close to maybe a foot tall. The plants are totally loaded with blooms and some of them are turning into developing strawberry's. Probably two more weeks and they possible could be the best berries I have ever grown. They now occupy half of my raised garden as you can see here. I think raised gardens are well worth the time and expense as you just automatically take better care of them as they are a focal point in your landscape and not just a place to plant, pull weeds and maybe wish your garden was not.
I threw a small amount of 12-12-12 fertilizer around into these berry plants maybe a month ago, but I think the master gardener had more to do with this success than I. Maybe this year I will have enough to share, eat my fill and hopefully freeze some of these berries. I don't have a picture yet but my purple asparagus is providing a bountiful crop this season also. I sprayed it with roundup early to kill the competing weeds and then applied a little salt to the area to prevent grass and maybe weeds from showing up later. So far it is looking good and the heat and rains ahead should bring on a good crop for the next 6 weeks anyway.
Now this little piece of the creation is my favorite of all. The Morel Sponge Mushroon provides both exercise trying to find them in the woods and provides much excitement when you first spot one. You immediately stop and look too and fro to see if there are others growing nearby. Usually there are at least one some times as many as maybe 15 or 20 will be in the general area maybe within say 50 feet. I took this picture on Susan's and I's last outing last Saturday. The season is about over, usually by mid May in our neck of the woods it just ends about as fast as it begins in late April. But look at that picture are they not beautiful...And the taste when you slice them in half, wash them, dip them in egg yoke and then cracker crums and fry them in butter or olive oil...You don't even want to think about it unless you have the desire to find them as they are highly addictive..Just say NO....
My last picture here is my hope for a beautiful pond next year or at least sometime in the future. These seeds are the seeds from Lotus Water plants that I harvested in a pond in Northern Kentucky last fall. The little white circle is man made by me as I applied each one to my grinding wheel to grind off the outer shell and leave a point in which the seed can escape its growth out of the shell. I read a lot about planting Lotus seeds last fall and that is what they all advise.
It does work as I got two of them to send up leaves last fall but it was too late in the season to establish them. I have here about 150 seeds and I planted everyone of them in about 3 feet of water depth about a week ago. That amounted to my arms length with my ear just lying in the water. At that depth I gently pushed the seed into the mud leaving the top just even with the top of the mud and the little white circle pointing up to the sunlight above....We will see hopefully some times this summer will be another blog story with round leaves of the Lotus plants floating on the water....And maybe if not this year next year they will have gained enough energy to make the large wonderful flowers that I envision circling my pond some day.
May is the most exciting and enjoyable month of my year I think. Watching God create for us each year makes me so appreciative of the world around us. On the right here are the most healthy strawberry plants I have ever had. They stand close to maybe a foot tall. The plants are totally loaded with blooms and some of them are turning into developing strawberry's. Probably two more weeks and they possible could be the best berries I have ever grown. They now occupy half of my raised garden as you can see here. I think raised gardens are well worth the time and expense as you just automatically take better care of them as they are a focal point in your landscape and not just a place to plant, pull weeds and maybe wish your garden was not.
