Happy New Gardening Year!

Hello Friends,
I always say that gardening New Year starts in October & I'm in good company because Monty Don said exactly the same thing in a recent edition of 'GW'. Although there are still usually last bits to harvest in October, there is absolutely LOADS that can be done to get next year's growing plans underway. Today I thought ahead to next summer's strawberries. 

This year's strawberries were very nice, but there weren't enough of them. There never are, & this is because for years, I've been growing them in a designated strawberry tub......which unhelpfully, strawberry plants just don't enjoy living in. Time for a change. I visited a community allotment earlier this year & saw a built up strawberry bed there which gave me an idea. I can't replicate it...... there are no carpentry skills in this house, unless Albert Whiskers has a secret little toolkit we don't know about......but it did give me an idea, so next year, I'll be constructing a new condo for our strawberries. I'll need lots more plants first, though, & as my favourite kind of plants are free ones, I started pegging down strawberry runners this year as soon as they appeared.

I say 'peg', it wasn't even anything that sophisticated. I just pulled the runner over to a neighbouring trough & couple of large pots, made a little dip in the soil & gently pressed the crown of the new plants in.

I snipped the runners & lifted the new plantlets today & found they'd made pretty good root systems.

Definitely worth potting up, as well as this year's plants, which I lifted out of the now defunct strawberry tub. One or two had succumbed to the Evil Weevil. I found a few of the telltale grubs in amongst the old compost, but I just spread it over an empty bed. Our robin will be jumping for joy when he finds those!

I used cut-down recycled yoghurt pots for potting them up, & stood them in shuttle trays so that I can move them around the greenhouse easily. It always surprises me to see these things actually on sale! Who would choose to buy more plastic when most garden centres have a stash of these trays by the tills ready for taking free of charge? 

That's 48 new plants potted up to over-winter in the greenhouse, ready for my new strawberry construction thingy when I make it up next spring. It's not all about looking ahead, either. I've enjoyed watching skeins of geese wheeling around overhead as I worked, another sure sign of autumn.
Albert Whiskers joined me in the greenhouse, but his attentions were soon called away to do a spot of border-patrol. Although he has zero interest in my plans for next year's strawberries, that didn't mean any old neighbouring moggy could swan in giving them the eyeball. Hungry Blackie & The Tabster were soon shown the way back through the fence, along with a suggestion that they might like to reverse a bit quicker if they didn't want a bash. Having won that little stand-off (two cats at once, you see), he had to retreat indoors for a bit of a lie-down........

........and he hasn't moved a whisker since!
To all my gardening friends, Happy Gardening New Year! To all those who keep meaning to grow a teensy bit of something or other, plan it now, & then it will be more likely to happen. And if you have a barrel of old crusty-looking strawberry plants which you haven't even watered since you ate the last berry, go & have a look to see if you have any runners to pot up......& treat them better next year!
Back soon,
C x