It sounds like you could profit from splitting your plot into experiments, including baseline for control.

I have a few informal experiments going, but unfortunately I did not have the time to do anything like that properly this year.

How is your soil pH doing?

Alkaline. I’m working on bringing it down. It’s going to take awhile to get the whole area adjusted. It’s not awful, though, the berries are hanging in there well enough.

Have you considered paying for soil analytics once to check for potential problems?

Yes but I’m poor on cash and poor on time so I haven’t done it yet. I’ve done some home tests so I have a basic idea of the major nutrients - severely deficient, except a few spots with potash content. I had very little success with growing anything in the local soil. Some things are in entirely outside-sourced soil, and a lot of other things are in a mix of the original soil and the imported soil.

my grass roof this autumn

I’ve always wanted a green roof (unless you mean a thatched grass roof - I’m going to assume not, haha). I’m not sure my current place is ideal for one, so I will probably end up just painting the roof with one of those white coatings that reflect the heat. I’m also thinking that a reinforced roof would be rather wise in a state of collapse…

Most of the new plants I add are eaten alive by snails and bugs.

That’s always annoying. I have pest problems but they aren’t that destructive. Not much you can do at the sprout stage, except to sprout them outside of the ground and transplant them when they’re a bit bigger.