I am a strawberry enthusiast. In fact strawberries are my favorite crop. The fruit is stunningly beautiful.It’s more than delicious. At their peak the plants are dark green and confident. We don’t have to plant them every year. I sell every berry my plants can produce.
Yet strawberry culture and marketing has left many a home gardener and small market gardener frustrated to the point of tears. Winter kill, insects, disease, weeds, renovation, and marketing problems are experiences that can drive you to till up an innocent strawberry patch.

My family’s small market garden has included a patch of organically produced strawberries since its inception in 1986.The patch provides us with subsistence eating of fresh and frozen berries twelve months per year and up to $1,000 of cash annually.But when we began we made a major mistake. We were in a hurry. We ignored the advice of those wiser than us. And we waged a losing conflict against grass and weeds for years as a result.

In mid-April we plowed a portion of an alfalfa field to prepare for the plants. After plowing and discing I ran my rototiller through the area before we planted in mid-May. In other words we kept the field black for a month before we planted. If I were to begin again I would keep the field black for a year. I’d combine every other week tillage with a late summer planting of a green manure of rye, oats, or solid seeded soybeans. All of these crops, except winter rye, would freeze out in my cold climate. They would protect the soil through the winter and put back organic matter.

You might think that you can put in a cover crop earlier and it will smother weeds and grasses. That way you won’t have to keep the soil black. My experience has been that well-established perennial grasses do just fine under most so-called smother crops. Another approach the strawberry grower may take, if they wish to add organic matter throughout the summer, is to sheet compost the field once or twice early in the season. I’ve not done this for strawberries but I do it while holding garlic beds fallow. I spread a thin layer of leaves over the area to be planted in late May when the soil has warmed. Then I till them into the top few inches of soil. I do that again a month later and, keeping ahead of the weeds with tillage throughout the summer, the leaves have broken down by fall. By the way, let your annual weeds get nice and succulent before you till them under. That way they protect the soil from rain, promote biological activity in the soil, and act as nice carbon collectors for building organic matter. Just don’t let them go to seed – and DON’T be as kind to perennial grasses.
Plants and planting

Variety is important but it’s a local issue. To choose your varieties visit the strawberry trials at the closest University Experiment Station. Then visit local berry growers.I have purchased berry plants from two places – a well known national garden seed catalog and a specialized berry plant supplier in Minnesota. The plants from the seed catalog were wimpy in root and I received exactly the number I ordered. The plants from the specialty house always have huge roots and included more plans than I ordered. The wimps either died or sent out few and skinny runners. This assured the establishment of a spotty bed. The big rooted plants lived and quickly sent out many thick runners. This bed is now lush and vigorous. There is essentially no recovery from poor plants – even two or three years later. Don’t settle for wimpy plants.

We hand planted 6,000 plants our first year.It was hard work and, now that I’m old and lazy, I wouldn’t do it again. But if you’re energetic and at least young of mind you can put a lot of plants into the ground without a tractor-pulled transplanter. Start with two people, strawberry plants, a bucket of water enriched with fish emulsion, and a long handled shovel. Soak the berry plants in the water for an hour before planting. Don’t dig holes with the shovel! Turn the concave part toward you. Insert it straight into the soil four to five inches deep and pull the handle back toward you about 30 degrees. This will open the soil.While the shovel is still in the soil the person not on the shovel handle retrieves a plant from the water bucket – never take a plant out of the bucket until immediately before planting – and put it into the soil. The crown – where leaves and roots meet – should be at or slightly below the soil surface. The roots should have plenty of room in the crevasse and not be bunched up. Now pull the shovel out and stomp, with your boot heel, on the soil near the base of the plant. This should close the crevasse up nicely. Don’t worry – strawberry plants can survive the glancing blow of your boot. Fact is, a friend of mine with a larger operation used to drive his tractor over his machine planted plants to make sure they were snug. After you’ve got your first plant in, pace off one foot and do another plant. One person runs the shovel/stomping effort and the other inserts the plants.

Space rows of plants three feet apart – no less. It may look too wide when you plant but remember those daughter plants who like to spread their wings. They’ll turn your too narrow row into a solid and unmanageable mat by fall.

If it doesn’t rain soon after planting water the plants – even if the soil is moist. Watering firms up the soil around the roots and eliminates air pockets near them that your big foot didn’t deal with.

Weeds and water
Have ambitious weed control goals the first months after planting. Use your garden tiller. Use your hoe. Get on your hands and knees. Be vigilant. Weed, weed, and weed! You will be rewarded by easy-to-weed strawberry beds in the future if you vigorously police weeds now, when it’s easy.

In late May your plants will flower and set fruit. Some suggest picking the flowers or young berry clusters. If your plants were vigorous at planting don’t bother. Spend your time weeding – or fishing, in that order. Good plants begin setting strong runners by mid-June. Runners should make you smile. They bear the embryo of next year’s harvest. A good mother plant may easily send out six daughters. You might try arranging them into the row occasionally but the daughters, like all children, go their own way.

Whatever you do don’t let you plants dry out. I have overhead movable sprinklers for strawberries and other crops such as corn and garlic. They work fine. Drip irrigation doesn’t work well. The lines get entwined in the beds and hinder renovation.
Keep weeding and watering until autumn frosts freeze everything that photosynthesizes. During a dry fall I’ll water one last time before the ground freezes even though photosynthesis has been shut down for a while.

Winter mulch
Where I live the ground freezes by early November. We cover our berry beds with a couple inches of straw or round baled meadow hay in late October. We do this not to protect the plants from freezing. The mulch keeps them from drying if there is no snow cover. More importantly it protects the crowns from the expanding and contracting soil as it thaws, freezes, and thaws in the spring. Failure to protect the crowns from this frost heaving may destroy them. Everybody mulches. You’ve got to.

For a mulch we prefer a grass such as reed canary. It has fewer weed seeds than straw. The bindweed in our fields came in with a neighbor’s oat straw. Round baled hay or straw is easier to break apart and fluff up than square bales.

The longer you wait to uncover your plants in the spring the longer you’ll wait for strawberry flowers. This can be good. Or bad.If you keep the straw on longer you might miss a damaging frost. If you pull the straw off as soon as the ground is done with its spring freezing and thawing cycle you’ll get berries earlier. I wait. But I always uncover the plants when I see the early signs of new growth under the mulch.

Strawberry plants look horrid after a winter under mulch and snow. Don’t despair. Clean up the aisles to 14-18 inches wide. Get your beds about 18 inches wide. The plants will do the rest.Trust nature.

Frost protection
But keep your eyes on the thermometer. If your plants are flowering or have green fruit and the thermometer is dipping toward freezing you better have been ready a long time ago.
I actually like getting up at midnight, walking through the woods to my berry patch, and checking the thermometer. like going back at 1 a.m. and again at 2 a.m. to turn on the sprinklers because the mercury is now at 33F. I like standing in the dark and listening to the sprinklers start to hiss and click. I don’t mind turning the sprinklers off at 7:30 as the last ice melts from the flower clusters. It’s a pleasant way to spend a night. What I do mind is working all day after that. And I do mind pumping 10,000 gallons of water on a field that doesn’t need it. Besides, the charm of hooting owls wears off the second night of frost.
We purchased 1,000 feet of six foot wide heavy plastic film six years ago. It doesn’t wear out if you take care of it. If we anticipate a frost we cover the plants at dusk. If you don’t want to use plastic try straw – but you’ll need lots of it. And plastic is a lot easier to put on, take off, and put on as that grueling four-night cold snap rolls through at the end of May. Even though, sometimes I miss those crisp spring walks under the full moon.

Summer mulch
Straw is used to mulch the aisles. Tuck it under the leaves and flower clusters that should be hanging into the aisle. Tuck it into the beds where berries might get splashed with soil. We try and leave a little straw from the winter in the beds, making sure it doesn’t cover plants.
You’ll need more for the aisles. Mulch in the aisles will give you brief weed control, it will add organic matter, and it will make for pleasant picking.

Renovation
Renovation is a hard thing. Who wants to cut their strawberry plants down? Tilling under 90% of the plants is enough to break any gardener’s heart. But you’ve got to be strong. Failure to renovate properly will leave you with an unmanageable mat of strawberries that will choke itself. Get to it right after harvest. It takes six weeks for runners from your renovated bed to become mature plants.

We use a scythe to cut the leaves off. A rotary lawn mower will work if it is raised as high as possible. After cutting, till the bed until it is just one or two plants wide. To do this systematically you will begin tilling on one edge and gradually move into the center of the bed where last year’s mother plants are. You should till up those old
mothers and keep the last few of their vigorous daughters on the far edge of the bed. These plants will form the nucleus of the new bed.

Your first strawberry season is now complete. Relax.

Tim King grows strawberries and vegetables in Long Prairie, Minnesota.