Bargain Berries

With prices steadily increasing on almost everything everywhere, bargains in the garden always feel like a wonderful treat to me - sort of like a reward for all that work involved in tending the garden. Take the rhubarb that I dug out of that garden in Bow last fall for example. Although not yet ready to harvest, my mouth waters for rhubarb crisp as I watch it grow this spring. My cost for these rhubarb starts - free.Noticing the $6.75 price tag for each 4" pot of rhubarb starts at Joe's Gardens the other day shocked me a little. I had no clue tiny starts of rhubarb would cost so much. What a bargain I got!
So far this seasn, I've been focusing most of my efforts on my already established garden at the Happy Valley Community Gardens. All of the mulch covering the beds over the winter has been removed, I've pruned the raspberries, planted seeds for some of the early, cooler season crops and done quite a bit of general cleanup there. Except for showing a few friends my new garden space and watching as one of them drug that downed fir branch out of my new garden space though, because that new space is going to need a lot of work before it is ready to plant, I've been waiting, putting that work off a bit until I felt I had the chores of my established garden under control. I just wasn't quite ready to get started.

That day has finally arrived and I have officially (finally!) started working in my new garden. In the process of pulling weeds, making plans to get some aged horse manure hauled in, meeting my new gardening neighbors at that end of the community gardens, I discovered a row of very healthy looking strawberry plants running right down the center of my new garden space.
Strawberries make an excellent ground cover under blueberry bushes, and I have two blueberry bushes. I got them that same afternoon as I got those rhubarb starts (for free!) and I had been considering buying some strawberry plants.
Now I didn't have to buy them because an entire row of strawberries came with my new garden. I spent the rest of the afternoon transplanting those strawberries from my new garden to my old.

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What a deal these bargain berries.