I am putting in a goodly amount of work on the old Seascape strawberries (compared to other parts of the garden). As I’m picking, I’m pulling out ageing or really old leaves- especially the ones that are on the ground. I try to get every piece of old fruit out of there that I can, and remove/disrupt/kill all the bugs that I recognize as bad. I am hoping that these steps are reducing habitat and helping the plants to focus on producing healthier fruit and leaves. I was able to pick another basket of berries tonight! I paid less attention to the other variety (was running out of daylight), but still picked a few berries out of there. I wish I had time to pick up all of the yucky fruit and leaves and put them into the compost, but I don’t. I’ll just have to be careful to not plant strawberries (or, my friend Aaron says, tomatoes) into that bed or either one of the surrounding beds, which were empty this season, for a long time!

I visited the peas tonight and pulled some weeds and killed a bunch of slugs. The oldest pea plants are flowering! The youngest ones are spaced several inches apart, and there is a gopher mound nearby. I think a gopher might have a tunnel under the bed.

I keep wondering if I should plant the garlic and onions with the new strawberries, or not. They both could/should finish around the same time, although digging out the alliums would be quite hard without pulling the strawberries out first. I can always interplant green onions into the strawberry bed. From seed, though. SIGH!