Saturday, June 5, 2010

Strawberry Picking

Anthony and I had so much fun today! We got up early this morning to go to a cub scout field trip to a local hydroponic farm. It was really neat! They grow everything in multiple styrofoam containers stacked on top of each other with a pole through the middle. They don't use soil for growing plants, but something called "growing medium" that is really light. It looks something like this:

They end up using tons of less water because they water the top plant once, and it trickles down to water all of the plants below it. They also have less pest problems because the plants are off of the ground and they don't get any bugs from soil (since they don't use soil). Lucky for us, they are also a u-pick farm! They had a large strawberry patch and Anthony and I stayed after all of the boys left so that we could get a-pickin'. It was one of the more pleasant experiences I have had with picking berries. Since the plants are stacked on top of each other you don't have to bend down all of the time to find berries! Most of them where eye level or slightly lower.

Once we got home and I started washing and cutting them up, Anthony came up behind me and started eating them. After awhile he turned to me, his mouth red from the berries and said "I can't stop!! They are too good!". They were so sweet and juicy that it made me want to buy my own hydroponic setup and start my own berry patch!

Of course, I do still have my garden that I started last March. I haven't been posting pictures of it because I am a little mad at it at the moment. The plants keep growing bigger and bigger, but most of them have yet to produce any veggies! The only plants that have been persistently giving me anything is our bean plants. The squash plants have taken up half of the entire box but have yet to give me a single squash. The pepper plant has grown to almost as high as my neck, but no peppers. Patience, patience I suppose.

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