Things are going well in the garden

 My gardening project for 2017 is doing fine.

  
This is the two new strawberry beds. Each is 4 by 4 and each has nine strawberries plants.


The two new ones are right beside the raised strawberry bed from last year. All three have the "Whopper" June bearing strawberry plants. The berries are suppose to get to the size of peaches.


Here is an example of one of them. The one of the right is about an inch big. There are other berries in the raised bed that are slightly smaller. They have plenty of time to grow.


This is a raised bed of June bearing strawberries. I got them from a neighbor and I am unsure of the specific name.


They have been great producers and it seems they will bear a lot of fruit this year, too.

These are the Ozark ever bearing strawberries. They are blooming as well. The Ozarks do not have as many flowers as the June bearing, but they will keep blooming through the summer.


Here are some of our blackberries. We had nine of them, but the late frost appears to have killed two of the bushes. The rest are already producing new plants.


The Ka-Bluey blueberries are blooming.


The Chandler blueberries already bloomed and are producing some berries.


The potatoes are growing in my 5-gallon buckets. I drilled holes in the bottom to ensure good drainage. I have used my water meter and I haven't had to water them since planting, but we have had plenty of rain.


This is my Korean Pear Tree. It has four pears starting out. Last year, I had about four to start, but only one grew to harvest. I read that whatever the first year harvest of the tree, it would produce double the second year of fruiting. That means we should get two this year. :)

Plants for Gifts

 I like using pretty containers for plants. I stopped by our local Salvation Army and found some pretty mugs. Most of these below will be gifts for friends.

 After I planted the mints into the mugs, I realized the outer two mugs are Mikasa brand. The middle one is Corelle. Both sets of mugs came with six, but no plates or other dinner wear.

 In this cute little pot, I planted a Dwarf Tophat Blueberry.

 This shiny container holds three different mints: French Mint; Swiss Mint; and Candy Mint. The recipients can decide if they want to keep the plants inside or to transplant them outside.

I have been having a lot of fun gardening this spring.


Evergreen Bagworm Moth Chrysalis

I found a chrysalis on one of our apple trees and didn't know what species it was. I sent the image to Butterflies and Months of North America asking if they knew what it was. I hadn't expected to have my sighting included on their site, but they did.

The chrysalis is of an Evergreen Bagworm Moth. The link to the image and information on the site is below.