Crazy But Able

Yesterday Keir and I went out stealing plants from the woods behind Keir’s grandma’s house. Going plant stealing with a botanist is always fun because you get to learn all sorts of new things about plants. I got a lot of practice at identifying poison ivy because Keir seemed to be really good at leading us into big patches of it. “See those twigs? Don’t step on them.” “Keir, those twigs are everywhere.” “Well… just don’t step on them.”

I was out looking for only one thing: wild strawberries. I want to grow some on my balcony; even if I only get three or four little teeny berries it will be worth it. I hate store bought strawberries but love wild ones. The main reason why I want a star trek replicator is so I can have wild strawberries whenever I want.

We used Keir’s new method of keeping the plants alive while we were transporting them: Take a sheet of wet newspaper. Fold it in half, and then fold it in half again. Lay all the plants on it, then fold it up in half over the roots and roll up the newspaper. Shove in plastic bag. Repeat until you can’t carry anymore.

I got my strawberries, as well as half a bag of wet sand (the strawberries were growing in sand; they seemed to like it there.) Keir got horsetails, some ferns, some sedges, and some violets for his grandma. We also found some ramps (wild leeks) but didn’t take any; I guess they are a little past their prime but I’m going to snag some anyway next time I’m out there. Plus I’ll take a few and throw them in mom’s garden for next year.

When Keir and I got back we discovered that we brought back a bunch of ticks with us. Keir had way more than me, but surprise, he was mucking about in the woods a lot more than I was. (I spent most of the time sitting in the middle of a huge patch of strawberries trying to figure out which strawberry plants had the best chance of living once I transplanted them.)

Today I put the strawberries in their containers. I left one of the strawberries I dug out in a big cylinder of sand (think sand pail castle); that strawberry plant I put into a littler terra cotta pot with some extra sand around it. I’m also leaving that one on the balcony full time. That’s the “control” plant. I took the rest of the sand and mixed it half and half with potting soil; I put the rest of the strawberry plants in the potting soil/sand mixture in a big azalea pot (I used to have some thyme in it, but I mucked it because it got so straggly.)

Speaking of thyme, I picked up an orange thyme plant at the farmers market for a buck fifty yesterday before I went up to meet Keir; I transplanted that today too. It’s a cute little thing; it has orange-ish stems and an orangeish flavor. I put it in the pot I used to have lettuce and green garlic in (lettuce from seeds + green garlic in the same pot was a huge disaster. The garlic sucked up all the nutrients in the soil, plus I didn’t follow the planting directions for the lettuce. I just used the garlic and mucked the lettuce eventually.)

After transplanting, I watered everything with a mild liquid fertilizer; I think that’s the right thing to do. Then I kept them out of the sun; but I want to put the strawberries back out on the balcony as soon as I can.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 at 11:42 pm and is filed under container gardening, gardenblogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.