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!

This morning and this evening I worked on the new bed that’s closest to the newly-planted strawberries. Z chisel-plowed it the other day, but one part of the bed was too wet, and part of the bed got kind of dug out (maybe he stopped or markedly slowed down the tractor in those spots), plus the paths in our garden are for some reason nearly always higher than the beds (a bad idea for a rainy winter and cool spring). So I experimented with a hula hoe, which was not the right thing for our big weeds in this bed (but ok for the strawberry bed); hoed new grass with the small hoe; and hoed out big weeds and big clumps of grass with the heavier hoe. This evening I tried to use a shovel to level out the ground, and then I tried to rake some of the hoed-out grass and weeds to the side of the bed. We’ve got to put the drip tape back into place tomorrow and perhaps cover the whole bed (whose soil I hope will not blow away before then) with compost — time willing. I’d like to use some fertilizer, too, but there’s not going to be time, and it’s fish-based, so I’d worry that the animals would just dig it up…

Just now I was thinking about companion planting and wondering just how much garlic seed and how many onion “sets” I have onhand– could I just plant them into the strawberry bed instead of giving them their own bed?? Sigh. It might be too late to plant them by the time I get around to it! #latenightgardenmusings

I also managed to do my most-complete strawberry picking in a week – I got about 2 baskets of berries. Every time I pick, I only get a few fully intact berries. That’s ok, though- we can freeze them and use them for our evening “fruit drink,” blended with banana. We haven’t been doing that much lately, and I haven’t been eating enough fruit at all.

I came down with a stomach bug yesterday. While I was napping, Z and T moved more of the posts from our bean trellis over to the pea row. It extends almost to the end of the peas.
I saw grey kitty in the garden yesterday while I was burying some greens that the wildlife had dug up. I felt too sick to pet her! And I hadn’t petted her on Sunday because I was in a hurry. I feel bad. (I didn’t see her today)

So Z did some chisel plowing on Sunday. Today we did some arguing about whether or not to install drip tape in the beds where the garlic and strawberries will grow. Yes, it gets chewed on within two weeks, but what if we don’t get rain? It is predicted to arrive in two weeks, I gather from an article that I haven’t had time to read. Last year the strawberry bed had 3 lines of drip tape- I had tried planting onion sets in the middle. That didn’t work out very well because the skunks or raccoons dug up 95% of them. We got one big onion.

Today Z and T took the sprinklers and water lines out of all of the cover crop rows. It turns out that the areas where we had 8 foot tall sorghum-sudangrass look that way because the sprinkler lines had come unplugged from the tubing- all of the water from those spots had been spilling out on the ground.

I hope that I get to do some of the mowing- our flail mower is somewhat temperamental and Z has figured out the exact angle that it has to be used at in order to not burn (literally) up the belts.

I picked strawberries and shifted the compost today. I also cut a bunch of leaves off of a chard plant that must have had its roots chewed last night or today – it wilted suddenly, but the leaves are Food Not Bombs quality, so to speak. Still edible.

I am feeling sicker tonight (need more naps). Hopefully will add photos at some point.

I started a new compost pile 2 nights ago, and the previous pile has not completely dried out to the point of looking like mulch that’s only suitable for a pathway. My piles are not as big as they should be for a “hot” compost pile, ie to kill weed seeds and pathogens. If I didn’t throw so many leaves and berries on the ground, I would at least have a bit more to compost… Tonight I also dumped out some weeds that were in the wagon and turned my piles of grass that I pulled, so they’ll dry out for compost or mulch.

I weeded the peas a fair bit, and hoed a few inches away from them (or so I thought – I punctured the drip tape fairly badly).

We’ve been enjoying a lot of visits from Grey Kitty lately –

I found one caterpillar on some of the younger greens the other day. I know there have to be more on the older ones. I’m so pleased that we are growing our own leafy greens– finally!

Today Z got out on the tractor with the chisel plow and landscape rake. I think I’ve got to put the strawberries (if I manage to get some- they will call me back this Friday to let me know if they’ve got Chandlers) and garlic (onhand) in where I’d been planning on. It would have taken me at least 24 hours to do the no-till equivalent (plus compost, which he mostly didn’t add) of what he did in minutes.

A hummingbird came and hung out with me while I was picking cherry tomatoes late this afternoon. I tried to get a photo and video- haven’t looked to see how they came out. Update to come another day. I hadn’t picked my Sungolds in at least 10 days. Some had fallen onto the ground. 😦 Today on NPR was one of the 1st times I heard someone talk about how helping farmers to be able to produce more saleable produce would be a way to reduce food waste. A _lot_ gets lost in the garden due to quality (bug damage/not picking frequently enough).