Strawberry fields

A major task this spring has been the transplanting of the strawberries.  First of all I had to remove all the compost I had squirrelled away and covered with sheeting in the area where the strawberries were to be transplanted. 

This was simple enough, as the green manure had been very disappointing this year, so I just covered it with the compost.  I think I had sowed it too late, so there wasn't enough light to help it get established before the winter set in.  Also I think it may have been the combination of varieties.  I used a grazing rye and mustard mix, where before I have used phaecelia.  I'm going to return to phaecelia again next year, as it created a good dense growth, and I'm sure I sowed it at more or less the same time. 

Next I had to gradually remove the black plastic and mark out and weed the beds.  I had woefully neglected the poor strawberries last year, so it was a difficult job to spot them amongst all the weeds, and then lift and separate them, making sure there was no couch grass root woven through their roots. 

I have plans to sow tagetes amongst the strawberries in order to deter the spread of couch grass.  Apparently their roots give off a chemical that is allopathic to couch grass.  However, I've got to make sure it isn't generally allopathic first, as it was just too much work to transplant those strawberries.  I don't want to watch them gradually die and be replaced by marigolds. 

I now have three neat beds of cleaned and watered strawberry plants.  I wonder how long they will stay that way.  It has been so hot lately that it was really not the best time to transplant them, but I couldn't leave it any later, as they were in danger of being totally suffocated by weeds. 

I discovered a geranium pretense growing amongst them, and can't imagine where it came from.  I've moved it to the boundary of my plots, which are going to be entirely populated by wildflowers. 

I have now smothered their old beds, which are now mainly beds of weeds, with black plastic.  In a month or so the area will be ready for its new life as a fruit bed.  Ultimately I plan to make a cage out of living willow and rubble netting.