Strawberry Pests

This is about twice as many strawberries as I got last year. Not kidding. My kids LOVE going out to my teeny little strawberry patch and eating this sweet fruit when it's as fresh as possible. Unfortunately, the slugs in my garden usually get to them before they're quite ripe enough to pick. And after the slugs have bored holes through the berries, the roly-poly's (pillbugs?) go in and devour anything that might be left. I did some research on how to keep slugs off the berries, and I tried salt. It worked very well. The first time. This is the beautiful batch I picked the morning after applying the salt. Ripe, and untouched by slugs (except the one on the far left, you can see it has a little hole in the side). I felt the need to reapply salt every time I watered, so I only watered them about every other day. And I think the "less water" combined with salt killed them. Now the leaves are all brown and withered around the edges, there's not much fruit, and the berries that are there are small and wilty looking. So... not sure what to do next. Any ideas?

I love free food!

Well, this is our 3rd or 4th year having a garden. And it's the first year we've planted the entire thing! We got a little over-eager the first year when we tilled a huge square in our back yard, and drew up plans for where everything was going to go. Little did we know just how little time we would have to maintain it. As I said, we didn't even get the whole thing planted and we ended up with a weed jungle in the back half. Over the last few summers we've had our own young children, and also had some foster children come and go, and some come and stay. This year, since the weeds have really overtaken, we had our neighbor till it for us. And then, one day, Derrick and I were able to spend an ENTIRE afternoon planting while the kids played in the yard around us. I have to say, it feels like such a relief to actually be able to do a project like this and get it done in an afternoon. It's been YEARS since we've had the opportunity to get anything done besides cleaning up bodily functions.

We started our seeds in December, in milk cartons. A few of them worked (broccoli, carrots, and basil), but most did not. Maybe our climate isn't quite right. Or maybe it never got cold enough.

THIS beautiful bunch of green leaves is volunteer romaine lettuce coming back for the 2nd year. I love volunteer veggies, it's free food without ANY work! I don't have a picture, but I also have a few bunches of spinach that never died over the winter. I had no idea spinach was so hardy. About once a month, all winter long, I would pick a small handful of fresh spinach from the garden and throw it into a salad or something I was cooking. And as soon as it was warm enough, more spinach plants started cropping up. The frugalista in me cannot even express how much FREE FOOD from my own garden excited me. Not only is it free, but it can be exactly what I want it to be. The foods I want, as organic as I want (which is totally).

Did I mention my husband has an amazing green thumb? I could never do this without him.

A Peek at our Garden

this is what most of our strawberries looked like by the time I went out to pick them.
All half eaten by some little critter. :(

beans climbing

one of the beans I picked yesterday:

peas (these are for my husband, I don't like peas)

zucchini (this was taken about a week ago, and if you've grown zucchini before, you can probably guess how many more little guys are growing out there now!)

the beginning of a sunflower (she's bloomed now, and looking beautiful!)

the little volunteer sunflower patch that came from a single volunteer sunflower that showed up last year. There are about 12 of them, and one of them seems to have about 4 or 5 flowers trying to bloom on it.

spinach

and last but not least, my favorite, tomatoes: