Garden sucess.....Strawberries!!!

Last year I built my own garden planter boxes to start my first garden.  I planted tomatoes, green peppers, basil, carrots and  green onions.  In 2 other planters I planted raspberries (pictured above, last years photo) and strawberries (pictured below, taken this morning).

 When you plant strawberries, the first year you are suppose to pinch off any blossoms that form so that the plants energy goes into the root system.   So I didn't get any strawberries last year.

So far this year I've gotten a few per day and they were fairly small.....but look what I picked this morning!

This was the biggest one that I picked.  I was so excited!  Neighbors told me strawberries don't do well here.....guess they do well in my yard! :)

It's been so fun to go out there and pick fresh strawberries for breakfast or snacks!

**My strawberries back up to a retaining wall and I've lost a few strawberries to slugs in that area.  Any tips on how to deter them from my berries?  I was thinking of running a strip of metal along the wall where the berries are close to the retaining wall. aka  "slug zone".  Or what about placing some tinfoil around that area, does that work?  Any tips are appreciated, I'm a newbie. :) 

And on a completely different note.....Inquiring minds want to know what a Potato plant looks like.....

I had some room left in my garden boxes so I decided to try potatoes.  My neighbor has great success with them (he's also from Idaho so it might be in his blood).  I found some potato starts on clearance (of course) at Lowes in early May so I bought some.  I think they were .75 for a bag that contained 10 starts.  I'll keep you updated on how the potatoes do. :)