Harvesting Radishes and Strawberries

I wanted to share a fun update on what we have been harvesting from our garden lately 🙂

Harvesting Radishes

We re-built our raised beds (with more space!) earlier in the spring. (Read more about our raised garden beds 2.0 here.) But getting everything setup took longer than expected, so we got a late start on planting. It was very cold here in Scottsdale this spring, so I am hoping our delayed planting will work out OK. However, things have been growing SLOW, and I am feeling impatient. So, when we finally started pulling some radishes from the ground, I was VERY excited! I wanted to share some pics of the first radishes we harvested this year.

Harvesting Strawberries

The other plant that is doing really well in the garden is our strawberry plant. We decided to try our hand at strawberries on a whim one day while shopping at the local Lowes. Why not give it a try we figured? They had really nice looking, pretty mature plants. So we picked one up, separated it into smaller plants, and filled up an old strawberry pot we had.

We harvest a few berries every couple days right now! My hope is that once the plants are established, we will see our yields go up. They are already more productive every week, so maybe by next year we will be swimming in strawberries 😉

Watering the Strawberry Pot

If you have ever tried to grow anything in a strawberry pot in Phoenix, I have found them to be a bit awkward. The little planting wells around the outside are shallow and dry out pretty quickly. Because of this it is difficult to keep the pot evenly watered. To try and mitigate this, we added one of these watering stakes that goes through the middle of the pot. This way, we can be sure to get the whole pot well saturated. I also added mulch to the top of the dirt, hoping that will help retain moisture. So far, I’ve been watering every other day (both on the dirt surface, and into the watering stake), and the plant is thriving!

Take a look at some of these gorgeous strawberries we have been harvesting!

So for now, that’s a wrap. Hopefully I will have more exciting harvests to share with you soon! We are trying some really fun new crops this year too (sweet corn for one). Fingers crossed we have some successes…

How is your garden growing? 🙂