My trick for broccoli and cauliflower is to go to the grocery store and buy them. Lol. Never had luck so quit trying.

Broccoli is pretty easy, but cauliflower and carrots are the ones I have trouble with.

In my pre tornado garden, I had a huge strawberry patch that the local turtles loved. I would go out one day and have several small berries and go out the next day and every single berry would have a single bite taken out. I laughed at the little turtles hiding under the bushes near. My strawberries grew like weeds so I can't help you.

Dawn - that is what is killing me on this, I didn't see any bugs, worms, nothing. I am thinking the local birds got me again. I wound up pulling two of the plants yesterday, there was just nothing left to bother with.

I am going to give strawberries another go and see what happens. I have been waiting to find transplants in the stores around here as I really don't like to do the bare root thing and that is all I find at this point. At some point the local stores are going to get the idea that gardening is a year around thing for people.

You think birds are eating your cauliflower plants? I've never seen that happen (but I'm not saying it won't happen). One easy way to figure out what creature is "stealing" plants is to lightly dust a white powder (I've done it with flour once and diatomaceous earth on another occasion) on the ground around your plants after you've planted them. Obviously this works best on a calm day or evening when the white powder won't blow away. Any small creature that is stealing your plants should leave footprints in the white powder, and from them you ought to be able to figure out if it is a rodent, bird, rabbit, etc. Bird netting placed over PVC hoops is the quick fix to protect plants from birds. I use bird netting at various times to protect plants. I feed the birds all winter, but sometimes they get hungry for something green to eat. My garden is full of birds and, as far as I can tell, they haven't bothered a thing this year, and I've got lettuce plants varying from 4 to 8" tall. Sometimes they pick at the lettuce, but they haven't this year.

I am surprised that the stores up there do not have strawberry plants in containers yet. They were in stores here in 3" peat pots from Bonnie Plants around the end of January, or possible even earlier because I think I saw a variety I didn't want in mid-January and just waited a couple more weeks for a variety that I wanted to arrive. Those first rounds of strawberry plants sold out fast, but then they got in new shipments around mid-February, and the good varieties for this region sold out. Then, there was a new shipment this week. I will say that our local stores here saw the warming trend and jumped right on it and now you can buy almost any veggie you want (well, I haven't seen watermelons or winter squash) as transplants in the stores here the last couple of weeks----not just the cool-season crops, but almost all the warm season ones as well--tomatoes, peppers, corn (silly to buy it as transplants and expensive too), cucumbers, summer squash, etc. Of course, we are nearing the end of the time to plant cool-season plants, so naturally the warm-season ones are showing up, but for most of those it still seems early to me.

In Sherman, TX, yesterday, I saw hanging baskets with strawberries in them, plants in 3" pots and some larger plants in 4-6" pots. Meanwhile I found my non-gardening hubby circling the containers of strawberry plants in our garden yesterday, trying to find the almost-ripe strawberry because I had sent him a photo of it on Friday. It was in the last container he looked at, and it still isn't fully ripe. I guess when it ripens we will celebrate by cutting it in half and having half a strawberry each to celebrate the arrival of spring in our garden.

I have planted strawberries from bare root in the past, and those plants did well for a couple of years, but I like the small plants in peat pots. I do remove the peat pots and not plant them (because we are often dry and the peat pots wick moisture away from the plant roots) but the plants take of fast since they already have a good root system when planted.

During the last 4 or 5 years, stores here have begun carrying veggie transplants much earlier than in the past. It is a trend that kind of worries me---because I fear brand-new gardeners will be lured into buying plants that cannot go into the ground as early as the stores have them. Hopefully people do their research and understand when each type of plant can go into the ground and have a reasonable chance of survival before they buy the plants. I'd hate to see people putting tomato plants or pepper plants in the ground during the last week of January or first week of February just because the plants appear in the stores around that time.

On the other hand, once soil temperatures reach the right point, and air temperatures are in the right range, I'd plant early if it felt right, but then, I have heavy-duty floating row covers that give 10 degrees of protection so I can take some chances. New gardeners seldom really understand how much our temperatures spike up and down at this time of the year. Case in point? I believe it was on Friday or Saturday a week ago that we hit 82 degrees here, but then about 5 or 6 nights later we hit 26 degrees. The 82 degrees tempts people into planting warm-season stuff early, and then the 26 degrees kills the warm-season plants. Then the stores make more money as people come back to buy replacement plants for the ones that froze. I wish the stores would post recommended planting dates in stores so new gardeners would know when to buy the stuff they see on store shelves, but they're never going to do that because it would hurt their plant sales too much.

Oh, and do you have rabbits or other small animals around that might be nibbling your plants? A rabbit got into my garden a year or two ago and went to town nibbling on nasturtium stems. I didn't figure out what was eating the nasturtiums until I actually saw the rabbit. Then, it ran from me and went back out in the same spot where it apparently had entered the garden, which showed me where it had found a way into the garden through the fence. I patched that spot and haven't had a rabbit in there since. Yesterday I found a hole dug under the garden fence, and after searching, I found the spot where the hole came out into the garden. A big hole. It is big enough that a possum, skunk or armadillo could have dug it, but I've never seen them dig a prolonged tunnel that runs several feet underground. I'm going to fill that hole with large rocks today and put soil back on top of it, and then I'll run the cultivator over the tunnel to collapse it. No matter what we do, the critters seem to find a way in if they're hungry enough.

Dawn - I have seen the birds in my yard go after the strangest things. Rip up whole tomato plants, grab herbs, peck out whole parsley plants! One year I found a pizza smelling nest in a bush in my yard. So I put nothing past those critters. On the other hand the other critters come in the yard sometimes as well. Every spring and fall a skunk comes and visits and takes some cabbage. He don't even care if I am in the yard. He walks on in. And I walk on out. LOL...

I was driving by the Lowes this morning and saw they had more transplants out, so I may look again. Last week they didn't have any strawberries, but I am going to give another go and see what happens.

I was chased by a skunk once. Luckily I made it back to the house and indoors before it caught up with me. I had to run about 100' to get to the house and wasn't sure I'd beat the skunk. That little sucker was fast, but fear made me run even faster.

Today I thought of you---I was walking into Wal-Mart and they also had a new shipment of strawberry plants in. They had some in hanging baskets in the garden center and some in peat pots on the Bonnie Plants' display.

Birds do behave oddly sometimes, but I have more trouble with small animals than with birds.