Eating Ripe

Strawberries...

I picked and ate my first ripe and tasty strawberry today. I got to check on everything before it started raining, again. It's unbelievable how much rain we're getting but you know all of that. Back to the berries... I check on the buckets and the Topsy Turvy. All the berries that were present yesterday were still accounted for today so my precautions work. The TT is covered in ripening strawberries but there aren't any ready to pick just yet. If we get a day of sun I'll probably be able to pick a full pint just from the Topsy in a couple of days. The 8G bucket sadly has strawberries growing but none big enough to ripen or pick. The 5G bucket had the one strawberry I picked and ate and has a few more that should be ready around the same time as the Turvy. There are also tons of blossoms turning into berries. It's going to be a strawberry summer if the sun can stay out for more than a few hours at a time. 

Everything else is doing okay for now but like I've said before and we'll say again if the rain continues there wellness will not be lasting very long. 

Bunny Be Gone

Strawberries Eaten...

After it rained all day on Friday I went out into Patch early Saturday morning to pick the strawberries that had been red and ripening for the last two to three days. When I got out there all but one were gone. I was shocked. I kept looking around to see if I'd missed them somehow. Since all the containers with seascapes in them are round and I can't see the back and front at the same time I thought somehow I was missing them. Then I saw it, a juice red berry on the ground. It had a small big toothed bite taken out of it but otherwise it was intact. I picked it up and put it in my basket. (Don't worry I didn't eat it.) I finally accepted that something, now I knew bunnies, had eaten al the ripened berries. I quickly put the basket down got the wheelbarrow and put the 5G and 8G bucket in it and rolled them over to the glass table in the driveway. When I was do e situating the buckets I went back to Patch with plastic black netting in hand. I wrapped the netting around the Topsy Turvy and Shepherd hook hoping it would be enough to keep animals at bay. When I was done I grabbed the basket with the bitten berry and went inside to slice it open. I just wanted to view the quality of what I'd grown. The second I slice into it it started dripping, and I mean dripping,  juice. It was the most perfect and juicy strawberry I'd ever seen. I went for a part towel not realizing I had juice on my glove and left juice stains on it. That's how juicy it was, juice was everywhere. That made it all the more disappointing that I couldn't taste it. 

This morning I went back out to see if anymore berries had been eaten and they were all there. I was so glad to see that the netting had worked and moving. The containers to the table had too. I don't have any ripe berries yet but I will soon and hopefully my defenses will work through my first harvest and beyond. I couldn't bare not getting to taste even one ripe and juicy berry after all of the attention and love I've put into growing them. I've paid more attention to those 3 containers than Patch and Potagar put together so I better get some berries.

Eaten by bunnies along with the rest.