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?

I’ve noticed last fall and this spring that if I miss a day picking strawberries, I seem to get less the next time I pick. I guess it’s the lack of slug and dead leaf removal that causes this problem. Or maybe I do have birds/rodents eating the berries.

I haven’t worked on my more recently planted berries in a while because I have been working so much on pulling dead leaves and plants out of the old berries, and of course picking the berries. Tonight I even picked up 2 5-gallon buckets of dead berries and leaves and grass I’d pulled out, and grass clippings, and put them into the compost pile I started (4/12). I got about a basket of berries.