First time starting a garden. (General Questions)

[DixieLou]

I am sorry to interrupt and as a new member I do not understand how to start my own blog so please excuse my inabilities. I purchased a large pot of evergreen strawberries at my local nursery. I split the pot into six sections, dug out six holes in a blocked off portion of my yard, mixed the dirt with good compost into a mound and set the section of strawberry from the pot onto the mound and without thinking pulled the excess original dirt surrounding the plant to support it while I did the same with the other five sections about 3 feet apart. I then placed weed screen around everything and help everything in place with 4 year old horse manure. Everything did good until yesterday December 7 (I live in Virginia in grow range 7a) when I noticed reddish brown leaves on several plants. I immediately applied Miracle Grow on each plant, and today I pulled back the straw and cut away the weed screening and dug around each plant finding little white root hairs trying to grow into the unrich sandy soil from the original holes. I filled each trenches I had dug with good rich compost and then recovered everything as before. I am sorry I did not do enough research prior to planting. Does anyone have an helpful suggestions?

[LIcenter]

First off welcome DL. I'm not sure what you are asking. Strawberries naturally send out runners, and this is what you are probably seeing. Kinda tells my your strawberries are doing just fine. If you are trying to contain them, that might be a little difficult unless you box them off.

[DixieLou]

LIcenter thanks so much for your reply, the reddish brown leaves were green when I first planted two months ago. I have read that lack of nitrogen in the soil will cause that the leaves to turn color (reddish brown). I think I have seen a few new runners which have been green. The white hairs are coming from the plant below the ground surface, and appear to be from the roots, seeking nourishment. I hope the nitrogen rich compost I replaced the poor soil with takes care of the problem. I was afraid to follow them back to the plant and disturb it this far into winter as I felt bad enough breaking into its blanket of warmth and expose it to the cold as I did. Thanks so much again for your reply.

[LIcenter]

Be careful with all that nitrogen. You will have lovely green plants and no fruit. Here is a site you may wanna look at. http://www.ehow.com/info_7965499_fer...awberries.html
Also too much fertilizer on young plants will burn them. That could be why the leaves are browning up on you.

[DixieLou]

Thank you. I probably could have avoided the problem if I had the courage to break open the root ball and spread it atop the mound as suggested by the nursery. How much can one tear into and spread out an established root ball when taking plants out of a container without causing harm and shocking the plant?

[arnettajimenez]

I do know that basil will do very well in a pot. I have a basil plant I planted early this summer and had I not neglected to water it lately it would still be doing good. I have it in a window inside and it gets plenty of sunshine during the day. So I would say definitely plant some basil, as an added bonus it smells so good lol.

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