Today in anticipation of the rain I brought 5 or so wagonloads of compost out to the garden and spread it on soil that was bald/degrading. Some of the soil is cracked and dry, other soil is cracked but looks like it is growing some kind of moss or something. There are some new gopher mounds, since the gophers have really gotten going in the last 3 weeks and there seem to be a lot of gophers. Thanks a lot, cats, occasional hawks, foxes, owls, etc. Last night we spread bell bean seed in some bald areas in the “wheat” bed and in the bed that includes tillage radish (organic matter maximizer, was it?). I also dropped some fava bean seeds to the east of the east row of brassicas (there is a red cabbage that looked perfect yesterday and just past its prime today) and to the west of the old strawberries.

I have to check the strawberry plantings very closely because they are all producing buds or even flowers (!). I have pretty much decided to leave them on the old strawberries since there are so many, but it means that if we have a frost, that fruit will likely not make it.

On Monday I started to clear the old brown and red leaves out of last year’s June-bearing (iirc) strawberries. You can really see the difference, but the ground underneath looks so impermeable. I wish I had time to finish that job and put compost (and maybe spray some fish/kelp stuff) around each plant.

I caught up on weeding the newer strawberries, garlic, and onions over last weekend, and started a new compost pile on Sunday (added in the remains of the previous compost, since there was still a lot of straw in there).

Z fixed the major irrigation break from the last time I mowed in the garden, and we keep discussing how we need to pull out all of the old drip tape. I found this mess today – either we had 4 lines in that bed, or there were 3 and one line was replaced but the old one hadn’t been removed.

The new strawberry clones (Seascapes) that I ordered have arrived! They were a bit dry in their open ziplock bags- I hope they will be ok. Parts of the bed were just about ready to be planted in before today’s rain 😦