Today I didn’t get out to the garden until 6:00. The new greens seemed to be pretty much ok after the raccoon family’s visit – there were small digging marks near some plants, but mostly on the other side of the drip tape from where I’d put the seedlings last night.

I picked strawberries, pulled out dead leaves, and killed tons of slugs and about 3 cucumber beetles.  I got less than a basket from 3/4 of our berry planting :(. The end of the season is coming quickly. We’d get a lot if we picked every three days and there weren’t so many bad ones! I usually throw the really bad ones on the ground and pick them up afterwards so they’re not just sitting out there like free food for rodents, but I didn’t get time to do that. T and Z returned with takeout right at sunset.

I picked green beans from our 2nd to last pole bean planting. We missed a bunch earlier in the week that are now really big.

I’m trying to find strawberry crowns that I can plant this month. People always recommend Chandler as a Junebearing variety. I’m having some trouble finding it (some do say to plant it in August, maybe that’s why?). A lot of places have early-season varieties that are good for planting zones 5-8, but we are “9b.” Sunset calls us zone 14, iirc, so I get really confused and can never remember our zone. But like, could I get away with planting a really early variety? Maybe if I can get just 25 of them, I could try. I got ahold of a commercial nursery that said to call back in 2 weeks, and they recommended just one of their varieties for our zone. They sell in lots of 1500 so I’d have to find some folks to go in on them with me… Last year I tried to get in on 2 different orders and none of them came thru for me (“we got shorted on our order”). So we’ll see!