Strawberries

[brownthumb2]

 My strawberries have been in their bed now for three years .so planning on renewing them and moving beds  next year .I  cant decide to grow them as I am now . just in the soil or to cut down on the weeding and  grow though  membrane or black plastic  What does others do  ?

[brownthumb2]

[johhnyco15]

cant get it to post however if you look at my gallery you can see last years new strawberry bed thats a 7"x2" joist grass cuttings, straw chicken manure pellets then cardboard then compost in the beds planted 12 honoeye  next bed 12 cambridge fav next bed 12 runners of my old strawberries and they loved it hope this helps

[Squashman]

I have 100 strawberry plants in 5 rows planted through ground cover, 3 years old this year so will plant new ones in new bed this autumn. I have had an excellent crop so far. I trench out the rows, part fill with rotted manure, back fill the soil into mounds, cover with ground cover into which I have burnt holes using a blow torch. I pot on enough strawberry runners as soon as I can into 3" pots. These are usually pot bound by mid autumn, I then use a bulb planter to remove soil from holes and plant the new plants. Works every time for me.

[Hector]

Last week we did exactly what Squashmqn has described. We have put in 56 strawberries as we did same approach on a smaller scale three years ago and it was very successful with reduced weeding and "clean" fruit. I used a cheap soldering iron to make the X for planting. Suspect blow torch much faster!

[johhnyco15]

sorry about the quality of the pic however here it is first year from planting