Strawberries and peas

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No, not eaten together, silly! This post is about Strawberries, but it also happens to be about peas…

Last weekend I potted up some Strawberry plants taken as runners from last year’s plants. My first ever purchase of Strawberries last year was of four small plants, bought as a mix-and-match selection at our local Garden Centre – 4 for £5. Now I have 13 specimens.

The new batch went into one of those wooden wine-boxes I got from Majestic Wine (looking nicely weathered now):

I haven’t got any suitable space available to establish a permanent Strawberry bed, so this is the best I can do. As it happens, I think it is quite a good way to grow Strawberries. It means that when the berries are ripening I can move the whole container and put it under a net or other suitably bird- and squirrel-proof structure. That’s a long way off yet though…

The Alpine Strawberry plants raised from seeds sown last July didn’t all make it through the Winter. Out of 8, I now only have 3 survivors. In due course these will also be transplanted to a wooden wine-box, when weather conditions allow. I don’t think they are strong enough just yet.

Also re-homed last weekend were some young pea plants. You probably recall that some weeks ago I was using up some old seed peas by sprouting them for use in salads. Well, some of these were of the variety “Boogie”, which I had forgotten is a semi-leafless variety, so not really suitable for salad sprouts! I kept a few of the best ones and I have put them in a couple of plant-pots out in the garden, equipped with some bamboo canes for support.

As luck would have it, the night after I planted these the temperature got down to -6C, so I bet the poor old peas were a bit unhappy, and would have preferred to remain indoors in the warm! They seem to be alive still, so here’s hoping that they will survive…

I had previously resolved not to grow peas any more, but as you can see I have failed. My excuse is that growing them in pots doesn’t really count, since it is not tying-up valuable raised bed space. If they succumb to Powdery Mildew or something, then I’ll just chuck them away, nothing lost. Actually they really ought not to get mildew, since “Boogie” is supposedly highly resistant to that disease. We shall see…

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