Well, I got out there tonight and pulled flowers off of the newer berries. i tried to pull some weeds but the soil is so hard that i can’t get all the ones that are close to the plants.
Although the soil in the old bed is so wet that berries are rotting:
The soil in the newer berries is cracking. We had a bit of rain last night and today.
We got roughly 2.5 inches of rain (as of 10pmish) today. The path into the garden (after the gravel ends; it is pretty low) is flooded at least as badly as it was on Monday and Tuesday before I put 9 wagonloads of compost on it. I can’t imagine what a mess the strawberries must be. Wow, this picture is blurry!
1.5 inches into the day’s rain, the noaa website said that we’ve now gotten 88% of our normal rainfall for this point in the year. What were we at a week ago? 78%? Our total annual rainfall is about 36 inches, but it stops raining by mid-Mayish and the new rainfall year begins on October 1st.
I… must… plan… summer and fall crops…
I think that I will start to get it together in time for planting a lot of fall crops this year. Before then, I’m not so sure.
Today I put a bunch of woodchips just past the entrance to the garden and partway down the path between the north and south sides because there was standing water (and/or uncovered ground). I got out to the strawberries for a few minutes this morning and tried to cover up the roots that were sticking up under some of the crowns – we’ll see if that worked. It was raining on me as I worked and I tried to take pictures of the raindrops hitting the puddle down at the end of the bed. This photo is from late in the afternoon. I think the puddle looks smaller. More rain to come. Hopefully over the years we’ll get the soil to the point where this no longer happens.
farmingmum 