Grow sunflowers and strawberries

They were so successful in the 2007 season that I am going to go from a dozen sunflower plants to hopefully around 50! And the babies from last year’s strawberry plants now fill a whole bed (they were just an experiment last year). Mulch is the key to growing things in the desert.

we had a sunflower “house” (actually more of a tee-pee), for the kids, with morning glories growing up the stakes. And a whole starwberry plot for the kids, we mixed in early fruiters, with long-season, so we’d have plenty of strawberries early on, and throughout the summer. And we planted borage, such pretty blue flowers, because I read it was good companion plant, but I don’t know why?

That was when we were back in Portland, we’re still reclaiming the backyard here. The nice thing about Nebraska, is that we have plenty of sunflowers coming up as volunteers, just had to thin them out.

i can’t find a pic of them earlier in the summer, actually in it, i think most of the sunflowers had come down by then.

Edit: Deleting pics of my kids, could only do this by uploading a new picture…

This is the third year that I’ve planted a Sunflower House for my children, and the second or third year that I’ve had strawberries. The strawberries are especially nice for black-thumb gardeners like myself, as they are very hardy and reproduce themselves easily. The sunflowers are so lovely and look quite extravagant as cut flowers.