If you are planting strawberries from seed the first year, you are supposed to pick the flowers off until July 1st so the roots can grow and you will get a bigger crop. You are also supposed to get rid of 1/3 of your crop keeping only 1/3 of your runners, next year do the same of your older plants replacing 1/3 of them, etc., each year keeping your strawberry plants at between 2 and 3 years old at all times. Always move them to a different location because of bugs each year, cut them back to 1 inch tall in fall and move to their new location. This is from books and internet and most say the same, but that is for everbearing strawberries. If you have June bearers, you never cut your runners because that is where your crop comes from. Do you know what kind of strawberry you have? It will help, there are 3 kinds, everbearing, june bearing, and another I can't remember similar to everbearing. I thought when you bought plants, they were on their second year? I might be wrong, but you can ask your nursery where you bought them how old they are. And speaking only from books, the cucumbers do not like wind either, they call them ridge cucumbers because you usually plant them in a ridge, a few inches deep in the row, this gives them a sunken bed and protection from wind. I can't say from experience this is true, and my cucumbers did better as ground cover producing much more than the year before, but location is probably the reason why too. I changed them to a different row the next year and on the ground you can say they may have sprouted more roots making more plants.

CAST, you probably are familiar with petite yellow, perhaps by another name. I call it that because that was written on the seed packet. It's a French variety (Tagetes) and an excellent bloomer. It is compact, grows 10 - 12 inches tall and is covered in bright yellow blooms until frost. Sometimes the blooms are so profuse the stem will split but that doesn't stop this bloom machine --it just keeps on setting buds. I don't fertilize marigolds but the soil in my beds is good. I can send you seeds if you want some.

I decided that Jaques Pepin's series that I mostly watched ("Fast Food My Way") has a good starting point for me. Seeing something on the teevee isn't my preferred way of learning much, however. It is hard to read the captioning while watching the "action" so I decided to go off to the library and find Pepin's two books on the subject. In the first pages of the first book, he introduces to what he calls "Instant Vegetable Soup!" "Elegant enough to serve guests" in about 10 minutes of prep and cooking time? Well, I guess but, still, this is one fast & easy way to make use of fresh veggies. I've even got some fresh veggies! I don't know how many light frosts we've had (weeks?!) but the bok choy, which can toughen with frosts, seems to have adjusted to them this year! I had a bag full to bring home from garden clean-up on Friday. Maybe I will make this soup with bok choy this afternoon. It is raining now and the wind will build thru the day! Really getting to hard freezing overnight Monday! Yep, no doubt about it: We've reached soup season. Steve Here is a link that might be useful: Jauques Pepin's recipe

A trooper it sounds like! Handsome too, can I ask out of curiosity how tall are the leaves? Am guessing 20-24" or so. Nice, happy envy for you! Some kind of Cylindrica? Evening fragrant? I've grown lots of Sans but never had one bloom, so cool.