Growing Strawberries!

For the first time I'm actually getting strawberries from my small 3 ft x 8 ft strawberry patch.  Other years I've only gotten a few berries.  This year my first picking, (we had been gone a few days) I picked a bowl full of strawberries.  I wish I had taken a picture, but I'd say it was about 2 cups of strawberries.  Most of them are small, but they are sweet.  We were so excited to have so many from our own garden we celebrated by making strawberry shortcakes.  We had plenty of strawberries for our two short cakes.  When I thought about it the one thing that amazed me was how few of the strawberries had holes from slugs.  Slugs eating my strawberries has been a problem other years.   The one thing I had done different from other years was, I had seen on pinterest to sprinkle crushed egg shells around your plants to discourage bugs.  Now with gardening, there are always varying factors.  The weather this year could have made a difference, but I for sure will be sprinkling crushed egg shells again next year.  Janet of Homemade Simply says to wash the egg shells and let them dry before crushing.  I don't wash mine I put them in the oven when I'm baking to kill any bacteria.  I've been composting egg shells for years.  It does help to crush them first.  You'd think they'd crumble in the compost pile, but in a moist compost pile they don't crumble that easy.