Bounty w. Grow Bowl Strawberries 11/27/17 Terminated

[serri588]

Still waiting on the second round of flowers- I hope picking off the first batch really was the right call. At the very least, these guys are going to be plenty healthy enough to give me some great berries.

[Shawn]

According to what was said on the AG HH, you MUST pollinate the flowers to get the strawberries.  I have never grown these, it is just something they answered to a question asked about growing them.

[serri588]

There was a 3rd party guide AG had linked out (maybe I'll see if I can find it again) that suggested picking the first round of flowers off in order to get a better crop in the second round. I might just be being impatient and everything will go just fine.

Still trying to figure out how I'm going to get them sufficient chill hours to keep them going for next year without an outside to stick them. If I can get them to go dormant, garlic supposedly can help bring them out early. If all else fails, I can throw them in the fridge for a couple months- one advantage of living on frozen dinners is that my fridge has plenty of space.

[serri588]

We have flowers! 3-4 per plant it looks like so far, which is a respectable first round.

[Shawn]

Wonderful!

[MaryL]

[Kate]

Feb 21, 2018 18:20:44 GMT -5 serri588 said:

We have flowers! 3-4 per plant it looks like so far, which is a respectable first round.

This is pretty exciting. I'd love to grow strawberries inside, but reading such mixed results is concerning. It sounds like you found the right watering schedule. I'd guess other's were mentally locked into what they read in a guide, regardless of what the plants actually needed.

[drbanks]

Still waiting for someone to try blueberries, but I'm still watching this one with rapt attention.

[serri588]

Feb 22, 2018 11:58:28 GMT -5 drbanks said:

Still waiting for someone to try blueberries, but I'm still watching this one with rapt attention.

I have two machines and two grow bowls ready and waiting for bushes to become available next month.

[Shawn]

I was hoping to try blueberries from seeds but did not know the height so I stopped looking.

[serri588]

These are doing great, and the berries I've gotten are tasty- much better than store bought. However, I've been bad about keeping them pollinated, so I haven't gotten as much fruit as I could have. They certainly have been putting out plenty of flowers.

[Kate]

They look amazing! Clearly, you did something right! People seem to have a lot of problems with these, but yours are amazing.

[serri588]

I run the pump a lot more often than the instructions say, and twice now I've had to pull out roots that were completely blocking the input pipe. The downside is it that the medium stays wet enough all the time that I now have gnats and there is a slight smell. I'm liking the clay pebbles I bought for the rest of my bowls more and more every day.

[Kate]

Well, that's a great tip on the growing medium. It makes sense too.

Someday, I'd like to grow strawberries. Sigh...

[MaryL]

Apr 23, 2018 10:23:43 GMT -5 Kate said:

Well, that's a great tip on the growing medium. It makes sense too.

Someday, I'd like to grow strawberries. Sigh...

I concur

[serri588]

I decided to pull these. The strawberries were great, but I was just too tired of the musty coconut fiber, as well as the fact that it was growing gnats faster than strawberries. I might do strawberries again, but I'll do it in the clay pebbles I use elsewhere.

[Shawn]

At least you grew Strawberries and they were good.!

[MaryL]

The gnats would do me in. Looking forward to your pebble media project someday.

[Shawn]

Gnats drive me nuts.  I hate them. 

[serri588]

These were very cool and tasty. I would do strawberries again, but I'd like to do them on a larger scale so I get more than a few mouthfuls.

I also disliked the coconut hull media. It attracted flies and it was hard to keep it from getting moldy.