For over a decade I’ve read in Acres USA magazine that you should feed the soil, not the plants. Yet I find myself using a lot of compost when I plant, and even as mulch afterwards, which attracts all manner of bugs – in particular, sow bugs. They love that decomposing stuff. They, along with the slugs, boxelder bugs, etc, etc love to eat my berries because they touch the ground (or weeds) and are easy to get to. Then my fruit is soft, plus maybe my fridge needs adjusting (well, it needs new seals), and then the strawberries can’t even be stored in the refrigerator for 26 hours. 😦

Those 2 baskets of Chandlers never got eaten, and I only got 1 that was not too soft. 😦 I cut it and the berries I picked tonight and froze them. That’s all I can do. I hope someone helps me make jam, because I am too clumsy to try to do it myself!

All I did in the garden today was work on strawberries. Well, I also tried planting some zinnia seed in the sunflowers (well, the cucumbers) and in the tomato bed. I also tried taking old flowerheads off of the borage from the strawberries and scattering the seeds on top of the tomato bed. I’m getting really into the concept of companion planting, but I’m a bit slow to implement it. I got a new book about companion planting that I’ll write more about another time, and I’m reading a really basic intro kindle book at the moment.

We are way behind on planting cover crops. I have tons of seeds to plant! I guess I have 2 available beds right now, but we need to prep some others. And I can’t just mow down the cover crops and plant into the residue, because that just encourages the slugs. Sigh!