Who Is To Blame?

Someone has been eating my strawberries! What cheek!

A few weeks ago, our first strawberries started to ripen. I planted them in a raised bed a few months ago, and have been keeping a close eye on the developing fruit, watching it turn from white to pink and, finally, nearing a gorgeous shade of red. Noticing one good-sized berry at seemingly maximum color depth, I bent down to admire it more closely, considering whether it was time for a pre-season taste. While the fruit appeared fine from a distance, closer scrutiny revealed that heinous crimes were being committed in my strawberry patch. A small hole, a nick really, had been carved in the berry's underside. Outraged, I checked some other berries, those that were not quite as ripe, and, yes, a couple of those also had small holes.

This development was really annoying, because just the week before, I had captured two huge grasshoppers, in two separate incidents, in the vicinity of my bok choy. Those freeloaders were leaving holes, some as immense as a 50 cent piece, in the leafy green leaves. Of course, disposing of offending insects presents a conundrum for me about how to deal with such criminals. A relocation program for bad bugs -- as in flinging them into my neighbor's pool and see if they sink or swim? The death penalty delivered quickly and surely-- as in off with their heads? The death penalty delivered slowly but perhaps not as painfully -- as in stick them in a jar and wait for suffocation?

I'm not good at killing anything bigger than an ant or a house fly. Even spiders that wander into my house are relocated outdoors. (Black widows must die on sight, of course, but they are the arachnid exception.) For the record, I opted for the slow death method with the grasshoppers, whom I imprisoned in a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid. After they were corralled, I conveniently forgot about the ugly critters, leaving the jar on the patio table for several days. This system allowed me with a good conscience eventually to toss the jar and its dead contents into the trash. Thus, I only played an indirect role in their demise, which somehow seemed better than taking a garden clippers to them, as my husband does. Also, tossing them next door was an imperfect plan, because grasshoppers do indeed hop, meaning they were capable of jumping back over the fence and returning to the scene to eat some more.

But, refocusing on the crime at hand, who was eating my strawberries? I eliminated a gang of grasshoppers from the potential suspect list. The holes were too tiny for those hulks to have been behind them. But a bird's beak could have made such a hole. I headed to the nursery for some netting to drape over the berries and stave off any birds. This inexpensive solution was easy to install and fell within my organic requirements.

For a few days after laying down the netting, I happily assumed that birds were the culprits, and I smugly believed that I had bested them, until I again bent down and looked closely. Burrowed deep inside a luscious-looking berry was a small worm. I pulled him out and tossed him in the rubbish bin. But now I don't know what to do.

How can I preserve my crop and keep the worms away without using toxins? What's an organic farmer to do?