I got out there this evening and started raking the new beds by hand with one of those hay rake thingies. Z tried raking, then chisel plowed, then raked again last week. There was a lot of grass there – both recently and non-recently cut, as well as grass that was growing. The grass and dirt got left in piles here and there- this happens if you stop or even slow the tractor down too much, so I was trying to spread the stuff out. Oh, and in some spots, he had put out compost, so I’m trying to get a sense of if I should spread more out there.

I didn’t quite finish with that project because Z called to say that he and T were going grocery shopping now that they’d finished with their trip to the park. That gave me around 40 minutes to pick and pull old leaves out of the old strawberries. I managed to pick about 2/3 of a basket – not too bad, considering yesterday’s assessment. Later in the evening, I got outside and filled 2+ 5-gallon buckets with yucky berries, leaves, and grass from the ground near the bed. Sanitation is important, but it should be done more often!

I spent an hour in the old strawberries tonight and only got a half-dozen berries. Good thing Z picked 4 baskets last night!

I think that all of the currently-ripe and near-ripe berries either have soft spots or are getting moldy. So they all have to come out. Too many are touching the ground, and the rest are sitting on or too close to dead/dying leaves. There were so many slugs out there tonight! Between the Chandlers and the old berries I must have killed around 50 in 2 hours or so. (I did weed a bit in the summer berries, too, but I didn’t see many slugs). Boo, more rain is expected tonight. So that’s about it for strawberries for a few weeks. There’s a lot more work to be done out there. I hope Z can help with pulling out that dead stuff. It seems to be a neverending task.

It’s awful going out there and just pulling out dead stuff and causing death to slugs (and what I think are box elder bugs) for hours!

I’m worried that I probably should have put row cover over the corn to keep it warm and protect it from pests (some are probably in the soil, anyhow). It’s pretty chilly out there.

On Tuesday I planted 4 rows of corn with Trilogy (green, yellow, purple) bush beans on the outermost 2 rows of drip tape. Today T and I put out seeds for yarrow  at the ends of the bed, calendula here and there, and more corn to catch up to where I had finished planting the beans. Finished the package. I think it’s about 15 feet of corn. The bed is not getting enough water since it started out so dry :/.

On Tuesday evening I also planted about 12 Seascape strawberries. There are still more in the fridge – how ridiculous. I will probably put the rest at the end of the Chandlers. It seems like I might want to keep the Chandlers for next year, anyhow. The weeds in that bed are coming right back after last week’s big weeding. I tried transplanting a borage plant in the summer strawberry row. I didn’t try to break up the block of soil, and I didn’t loosen the soil deep enough when I put it into the ground. It’s pretty wilted.

We lost a Chandler strawberry plant. I noticed it was super-wilted, so I turned it upside down and noticed that there were basically no longer any roots attached to the crown. I blame gophers although there aren’t any signs of them. We don’t trap these days, but we need to.

Meanwhile, I’m still getting about a basket of strawberries per day. The Camarosas are starting to yield berries, but the plants are so tall and the debris on the ground so thick that it’s tough going. I’m pulling out a lot of old leaves and runners as I go along.

I’d like to put in a late bed of greens in the next week. I think that that will only happen if the chisel plow and landscape rake are put into use. That said, the flail mower is hooked up to the tractor in anticipation of mowing the south side of the field if it can be driven on.

Ok, that was ridiculous. It took roughly 8 hours to get that bed hoed, raked, covered with compost, and raked again. I still need  to add amendments, figure out what I’m planting (beans? beans and corn?) and get drip tape out there. After watering over a couple of days, hopefully the soil surface will be wet and I can plant.

Meanwhile, it is supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow.

I started hoeing a new bed yesterday (northwest). I was thinking pole beans, but now I’m thinking either something fast-growing, or a cover crop to get that soil covered.

The strawberries are still happily flowering. I picked a basket of the old ones today. We tried a quickie planting of some herb seeds in the summer and spring beds this weekend.

Here’s a view of how ridiculous my garden is. There are weeds, gophers, and herbs – in this case, borage – to contend with. Adding a lot of

I’m still feeling great about the time I spent putting all that extra compost on this bed- the spring strawberries only got compost around the plants. The compost is not really visible anymore, and I can’t even scratch into the rock-hard ground to figure out if it’s wet. Argh! Also there are still 20 or 30 seascape crowns in the fridge. I could put them at the end of the Chandlers when/if I run out at the end of the seascapes?