New reality day 316

My strawberries are making berries already!

There's some breeds that are still in flower and some that are in more advanced stage. I got so happy when I saw these this morning! Just had to blip them before work :-)

"Thorough pollination improves the shape, size and quality of the fruit. One study compared strawberries pollinated by bees and non-pollinated strawberries. Even and abundant pollination reduced the deformities of the strawberries, they became bigger, firmer and better preserved, the color improved and the sugar content increased."



I wasn't sure if the bees would find their way into my greenhouse even with the doors opened, so I used a small brush to pollinate the flowers myself. I hope I succeeded. The next result will be seen in my zucchinis. Those need to be pollinated, so I'm very curious to find out if I'm gonna see any vegetables or not.



My tomatoes are growing fast, but no flowers to be seen yet. They need to be pollinated by shaking the flower. I think I need to watch another YouTube video before I do that. I wanna be sure I'm doing it right. I don't know if the pollen is light enough to travel through air or if it's supposed to fall on another flower. If anyone knows, please advice me.



My few beetroots are doing splendid. My spinach and radish plants are also doing great. All seems to be growing as should. I'm most excited about the paprikas. I have so many and they are growing very nicely, but will they produce anything eatable?

I even see something happening with the cucumbers which I planted to semi-finished vegetable bed the latest and that vegetable bed will be made better next summer. It will need our own good compost and some work turning the ground. But this summer I just put a layer of store bought compost and seeds. It was a very fast solution. I thought it's better than letting it grow weed the whole summer.

Oh my watermelon try. That's growing slowly. But growing. I doubt there will be no melons to be eaten. Perhaps If I buy a plant light and keep them in very warm under the light after summer... But that was more about curiosity than anything else.



Broccoli also growing slowly, but doesn't seem to suffer.

I have 2 kinds of compost in the greenhouse. I have one that is more nutritious and one that's more sandy. I was reading about which likes which. But I also run out of space so not everyone got what they really needed. There's also lots of post in the greenhouse. So first year I hope to get some vegetables and learn a lot. And then next year I can plan better and hopefully get more to eat.

Oh! We bought an extra freezer yesterday. We'll put the new on in the kitchen next to it's brother the fridge. (They are the same brand and same white color that the old and bit faded.) And the old one will put into the household utility room (next to the kitchen). We'll take a way one cupboard and place that in the big bathroom. So I'll have one freezer for fruit and such in the utility room and one in the kitchen for frozen foods and bakery and ice cream and such that we use basically daily. 

Our freezer is extremely full. There's no space left and in few months I'll hopefully be drowning in berries (the Saskatoons are brilliant this year), so in years to come....