Yep, here I am back out in the garden! Spring time is here and it's time to get some plants going! I feel like I am a bit behind, but that's life sometimes, at least it's going now. I ordered 25, which actually turned out to be 26, strawberry plants from a place called Johnny's Seed Co. I had something different in mind, like when you buy starter plants in flats from a nursery or home garden store. Nope, they came in a little bag with cut stems and a nearly full root system!
The came in a couple of days ago and have been sitting in the refrigerator since they arrived because we have been dealing with some pretty major weather and I wanted to wait for all that to come through first. Now that's all gone, it's time to put them into the dirt!
I laid them out on the beds in the spacing that they are going to need in both of the raised beds. I only had enough soil for 2 of the 6 raised beds, so that's what I am working with for now. Everything else I have is all in seed form currently, so it's not like I am in a super rush as I was with these that needed to go into the dirt as soon as possible.
So I started digging holes in the raised beds and put the roots down into the dirt, filled around them, and left the cuttings exposed so they can grow! You want to make sure they have space to grow. Strawberries tend to leech out quite a bit, so it's important for the plants to have room to grow.
After it's all said and done, there were 16 plants that went into these 2 beds. 8 in each bed. These raised beds are 6 feet by 3 feet and 1 foot high, so they should have plenty of room to grow and thrive!
Now that I have the plants in the dirt, I am going to surround each of them with a 3D printed strawberry rack. The purpose of this rack is keep the berries off the dirt so they don't ruin. This will let air flow all around them so they don't get all soggy and moldy. This is what each bed will look like. I was short a few racks for the other bed, so I will have to print some up. The cool thing about this design is I can keep expanding the racks out as the plant grows, so I will need to print up a bunch of them.
But doesn't that look great! I am really proud of how the beds are looking. Now just need more dirt, lol! I underestimated, by a long shot, how many bags of top soil and compost I was going to need, haha. But it's all good, we will get them done in the next couple of weeks. So now for the last step, watering! I like to recycle milk jugs to be watering cans. I 3D printed up a new pour spout today in preparation for this, so it was time to put it to good use!
It's good to get your hands in the dirt though. You get to ground yourself to the earth which lets you discharge your negative energy. It's a thing. Think about how electricity works, well your body is a giant battery really (the Matrix had this correct), so it's good to ground yourself because that negative energy builds up and needs to be released.
The boss has been out of town for several weeks, and our brokerage has been giving us security issues with me being on one side of the country and her on the other. But she is back this week, all our options contracts expire on Friday, so Monday will be back to business as usual! This means after my options plays on Monday, I will be able to go get another big load of dirt and get the next couple of beds all ready!
But what I need to do next is finish getting these last plants into some dirt, so into the greenhouse I go to plant them into some of my 3D printed self-watering pots! But I am going to turn that into a whole other post, so come back tomorrow for more gardening with the Dude on 
Until next time...
Be cool, be real, and always abide with you my dudes!
