Strawberry Crowns in an AeroGarden Farm Ended by Thrips

My mom was so jealous when I sent her a photo! She LOVES strawberries, but even with bird netting hers always get picked over if she’s not fast enough! She has a really lovely strawberry bed made from an old boat that had holes in the bottom so they filled it with dirt. Hopefully they have better luck keeping the birds off this year!

Oh, I've seen those types of covers! We'd have to do a net version for sure if we went that route, it gets too hot in the summer for plastic covers, though maybe a plastic version for winter/early spring would be good, to give the plants an early start.They had just draped the netting across the plants, elevated a little with some shorter gardening poles. The birds just landed on the netting and picked through the holes. Also the feral cats that like to live on their property like to lay in the boat (nice and cool because of the plants and water, and in a semi-shaded area), so they would pull the netting out of place. Something that curved over like the wagon-cover types, with some extra supports through the middle, may be just the thing!Not sure what I'll do with the berries if I end up getting lots!! Right now there's just a few to snack on in there. Maybe a pie if I get enough! I love strawberry pie DcKpvN

Ooooh ice cream!!! I don’t usually care for it, but can’t go wrong with homemade strawberry or peach ice cream!

Thank you! Every day I fall more in love with hydroponics, especially AG!Soon it'll be consistently warm enough at night that I can move all my potted plants outdoors. When that happens I'm going to do a total over-haul of that room, re-arrange everything and make it purely hydroponic. I'm more and more convinced the potting mix is where my seemingly unending bug problem came from. Amazing how what would be a no-big-deal pest problem outdoors becomes such a major one indoors! Closed environment with no predators really encourages the little turds. It's gotten a lot better, and the plants all look much healthier for it, but I still find some to squish every time I go in there! Being able to vacuum the plants has helped a LOT, both in getting the bugs off and providing me a very quick and easy way to remove dead plant matter, giving bugs fewer places to hide and breed. I'm also planning to leave AGs empty as projects come to an end, and once they're all done giving it an additional month at least before I start anything new, in the hopes that all the bugs starve and all the eggs die.The Harvest pequin is the only project I've ended so far, I actually sanitized that machine and moved it to the kitchen to start my outdoor seedlings in. I've been obsessively checking for bugs/bug damage on it and the other two AGs I've got in the kitchen with it. So far so good there!And once winter rolls around again, the potted plants I overwinter inside for sentimental reasons are going into the garage where they can't infect anything!! I recently cleaned and re-organized out there, so there's a nice little nook for them to go into near an outlet so I can hang grow lights. It stays reasonably warm in there during the winter, and I have a nice radiant heater to warm it up even more if I feel the need. Hopefully all this boils down to never having to battle bugs again!! I think I've got a couple months at least before I pull the trigger on ending all my projects, and I'm going to be saving this one for last. I've got a lot of peppers and tomatoes I want to ripen up first. And I'm definitely starting strawberries again once I reset everything!

Lol I’m hoping my outdoor garden takes off enough to keep me distracted while all my machines are empty, I get so bored without plants to fuss over!!And it’s so hard to choose between long trips and veggies!! I hope you get to go on some wonderful trips this year, and things don’t get closed down again!

Picked and ate two of the strawberries today. They’re sooooo much better than store bought, I may never buy strawberries from a store again

Unfortunately I had to terminate this and all my other gardens a while back because of thrips. I'm slowly starting things back up, but I haven't put strawberries back in. I only got to taste maybe three strawberries before having to terminate, but they were super tasty!! And I also think they would have been very productive if I hadn't had to terminate before they ever even really got started.