Berry Facts

Found these facts while looking up grow techniques:

Here's a list of fun (They're not really fun) and interesting (or interesting) strawberry facts and trivia:

Madame Tallien - She used to bathe in strawberry juice

• A strawberry has, on average, 200 seeds
• If all the strawberries produced in California, in one year, were laid berry to berry, they'd wrap around the world 15 times
• Strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside. It is argued that for this reason, it cannot be considered a real berry, since berries carry seeds on the inside
• Ninety-four percent of U.S. households consume strawberries at least once a year
• Strawberries often gain top positions in surveys as the favorite fruit: in 2007 over 53 percent of seven to nine-year-olds picked strawberries as their favorite fruit
• A French noblewoman at the time of Napoleon, Madame Tallien, used to bathe regularly in strawberry juice, using 22 pounds per basin. She didn't bathe daily though
• Strawberries have a long-dated history of medical uses, the Romans for instance used them to alleviate symptoms of fainting, kidney stones, inflammation, diseases of the blood, liver and spleen, throat infections, bad breath, attacks of gout, melancholy and fever
• The etymology of the name "strawberry" is still largely unproven: some argue that they were named in the nineteenth-century by English children who picked the berries, strung them on grass straws and sold them as "Straws of berries". Others theorize that the name was derived from the nineteenth-century practice of placing straw around the growing berry plants to protect the ripening fruit
• Charles V of France ordered, in the 14th century, that twelve hundred strawberry plants be grown in the Royal Gardens of the Louvre
• Strawberries are the first fruit to ripen in spring
• Strawberries were a symbol of perfection and love: for instance, folklore says that if you split a double strawberry in half and share it with a member of the opposite sex, you'll soon fall in love. Medieval stonemasons carved strawberry designs on altars and around the tops of pillars in sacred places such as churches, as a symbol of perfection
• 23,000 acres of strawberries are planted in California each year.
• The world's largest strawberry shortcake is hosted in the annual strawberry festival in Lebanon, Oregon
• In some places of Bavaria, country folk practice a spring ritual of tying small baskets of wild strawberries to the horns of their cattle as an offering to wood elves. The legend states that the elves, who love strawberries, will offer their gratitude producing healthy calves and an abundance of milk
• In Belgium there's a museum entirely dedicated to strawberries
• Strawberries are grown in every state in the United States and every province of Canada.
• The strawberry plant belongs to the same family of roses, genus Fragraria, together with other fruits such as apples and plums. The name of the genus comes from the Old Latin word for "fragrant". In modern Italian, the word for strawberry is still "fragola"
• California produces one billion (yes, with a B!) pounds of strawberries each year

Here's the original site.

Fungus

Misting is bad. Shit. Reading this page and I think there might be some mold on the ladies. There is a laundry list of diseases possible, so hopefully they will do better now that I'm not misting them anymore. It's tempting to scrap the whole thing and start off with better stock, but I'll see what happens.

Pictures

Album

So I figures it's time to put some photos up of the blackwater berries. Since they're true identities cannot be known, they were all given stripper names. There's Misty, Punky Brewser, Paris, and Raggity Ann. Raggity Ann is the one in the foreground. If you look closely, you can tell that she's the skank of the bunch and as such, not much is expected from her. She's the one that will get the rest kicked out of the bar if they ever go and probably get pregnant first, which is good in this case, because pregnancy means berries. Sweet, delicious unaborted berries. Then again, she's the one who looks full of diseases, so like teen moms there is a trade off here.

Not much is expected for now, but I figure in a week or two it'll be worth it to take a few more snapshots.

No word on that strawberry stealing baby. I couldn't find any pressure-activated claymores at Wal-mart so instead there are rattles placed strategically over punji stick traps. It may be too soon to worry as there are no berries to steal, but you can never be too careful with babies. If there's something worth stealing/slobbering on/ruining, you're bound to have an infestation soon. Hopefully, the blackwater berry stripper codenames will act as a deterrent. Babies fear strippers because they cannot feed on them without getting a mouthful of silicone.

~ Grow Monkey

Another thing

Researching Hydroponic strawberries and the Internet Google produced this pre-packaged junk as information:

Hydroponic Strawberry Growing

Day-neutral strawberries adapt well to your heated hobby greenhouse. Instead of discarding runners from your strawberry patch, keep those from your healthiest plants for hydroponic growing. Insert the roots into an inert growing medium such as perlite, coconut fiber or Rockwell.Alternatively, you can purchase starter plugs from most hydroponic suppliers. Cover your transplants with a clear plastic dome to keep humidity levels high and keep them out of direct sunlight until roots are established. Next, simulate a winter for your new seedlings. Dip roots (or plugs) in microbial solution, gently wrap them in clear plastic and refrigerate them for two to five months. After this rest period, your transplants are ready to be added to your hydroponic system. If possible, grow your hydroponic strawberries in a glassed in porch or green house. However, indoor garden lighting also provides them with the six to seven hours of full spectrum sunlight they need each day. Keep temperatures in a range from 64 to 77F (18 to 25C) for best results. Nourish your strawberry plants with a commercially prepared organic hydroponic preparation. Although pH should be maintained between 5.8 and 6.2, in lieu of constant testing, changing your solution twice a month typically works as well. Since you won’t be able to depend on honeybees to pollinate your blossoms, you need to hand pollinate. Simply brush the blossoms just after they open, transferring some of the pollen from the stamens to the pistils. Also, use an oscillating fan to help accomplish pollination.

Oh, well 64-77F degrees and nourish my plants with 5.8 phs. Thank you for all the insight.

Although, I am well-versed in hand pollination.

~Grow Monkey

Baby Intruders

Yeah, I was looking up things for ideas on growing these here strawberries and came across this blog about a creepy baby who steals from hardworking strawberry growers.

So now I have to take measures to secure my setup from intruding babies. A pressure sensor claymore should do or maybe a shotgun.

Here's the link: http://daisysfamily.blogspot.com/2009/04/hydroponic-strawberries.html

That's her in action.

Speculations er specifications

For this grow, I slowed things down. Instead of ADHD'ing out with 6-7 plant types and 3-4 different growing mediums, it's one plant in one type of container.

The Plant: Strawberry. There's a million different types of strawberries, so which one are we talking about here? For the time being, they are Blackwater berries, because their identities are unknown. My best guess is they're normal ever-bearing strawberries with special ops training.

The Setup: One type of setup here and it's hydroponic. I made as few improvements as possible to little Venice. One improvement was covering the top of the reservoir with aluminum foil as to keep the light out. Last time I had algae growing in the reservoir and it got gross and weird. No more of that. Yeah, that's all I did. I'm looking up cheap ways to boost co2 and things like that, but until I get some cheap answers, that is the final list of improvements.

Preparation: I threw all the tomato plant corpses into the trash. That's a bad atmosphere and counterproductive foreshadowing to the strawberries. If they were to see dead comrades, they would most likely give up hope and quit growing. The reservoir and grow area got bleached and refilled. I used 6 gallons of water and 5 teaspoons of Miracle Grow 24-8-16 blue powdered fertilizer. Strawberries do better in acidic medium, so the solution was PH-balanced to around 6.3. That may be too alkaline, but we'll find out. The main goal right now is to get the plants growing leafs and otherwise. I'm looking for signs that they are adjusting to their new environment and beginning to take to it before I go jazzing up the nutrient mixture with proper fertilizer. I'm considering buying some grow light flourescents and seeing how that plays. Since the area is small, I may even spring for a HPS outfit or build my own CFL grow lamp, which could be fun and... educational.

Research: Came across some information saying that picking off runners and little berries will encourage root growth. So I did that along with yanking off anything dead looking. Spider mites are a concern with strawberries and there was some funky stuff going on with the plants before I got them indoors. Did my best with that, but I'll see what happens. I have no idea if Lysol helps, but I Lysol'd the shit out of my room and specifically the grow area. I'm hoping spider mites are one of the 99.9% things Lysol kills and that strawberries are among the .1% it does not kill. These berries must be tough though or they never would've made it through Blackwater's training regiment.

Temperature wise the room's a pretty decent 65-75 degrees Fahrenheit now that it's summer, so I'm not worrying about that much.

We will see how this horrible experiment plays out. Possibly adding a few more blackwater berries into the mix, because 4 plants makes it look all sparse and depressing. Plus, I'll be damned if I don't get at least a few nice strawberries out of this mess.

Problems & Solutions

So after a couple months of looking at dead tomato plants (they really set the atmosphere), I decided to replace them with something less dead. I actually have been thinking a lot about this and was looking for a plant that I could commit to that would work better in the indoor environment. Here are some of the factors to consider:

Height. Chinatown has a maximum height of 3 3/4 feet from base to top. Without modifying Venice too much, about 8 inches of that 3 3/4 feet goes immediately to reservoir. So ideal plants would be max out around 1-2 feet to make my life easy. And when my life's easy, there's less of a chance I'll let everyone die out.

Variation. For awhile there, there were about 5-6 different plant types. Spinach, broccoli, cabbage, tomato, jalepeno etc. Different plants have different needs. Much like an orphanage, having different needy plants led me to neglecting all of the plants to some degree (compromising acidity in some, light in others, etc). Since you can't compromise too much if you want something worth harvesting, only the strong survive and you're left with 20 healthy tomato plants surrounded by a bunch of gimpy, shorter, unadoptable comrades.

Dirt is boring. As much extra work hydro stuff is, it's worth it to see progress. After you buy 14 timers, pumps, PH testers and everything else it's a shame not to use it. On the flip side, growing both hydro and dirt simultaneously is time consuming and annoying when the one group you're babying (dirt) tends not to get as big or move much. Plus, dirt is a bigger pain when it spills on your carpet.

Payoff: There's a fine line between legal and illegal things (that line is called the law), but payoff tends to factor in. When you spend 4 months growing cabbages only to end up with two ziploc bags full, it's time to reconsider what you're growing. I don't eat healthy. I hate tomatoes. Time to grow something I like.

My solution: Strawberries. Plants are short, researching one species is doable, there's not a lot online about hydro strawberries and strawberries are delicious.

Outcomes

Well, I got bored. Many out of town trips led me to totally neglecting the plants and the ones that managed to stay alive er.. kept fighting ended up either outside (where they died) or given away (where they also probably died). Aloenzo fell out of his pot at some point and has successfully failed to root while laying on the desk sideways. John Doe lives in the kitchen now, being severely overwatered. I may have to repossess him and get him flourishing again, but who knows. Those monkeys have grown their grow and I'm ramblin on.

New Grow!

Now is where I am cryptic about what the new crop contains.

7er gy s qghwixollz!

hint: You put it in your mouth

~Grow Monkey