The strawberry struggle

Runners: I have been working against nature.   Stawberries will throw up runners every autumn and try their best to recreate themselves by this simple process.   And by having a weedproof fabric down all along the length of the strawberry bed, I have been making a huge amount of extra work for myself.

Each autumn I have filled up pots of containers with soil, taken them down to the strawberry bed, unearthed the runners, stuck them in the pots, secured them with a small pebble and then left them until Christmas.

And then it was cut off the runner from the parent and take the new little plants up to the potting shed to sulk all winter and put on growth for spring.

And then, you guessed, back down to the veggie garden and plant them out.   The weedproof fabric isn’t even doing a good job.   This was the sight that greeted me today.   A forest of weeds all on top of the fabric and taking root.

So instead of just cutting small slits in the fabric and slotting in the new plants, I spent a happy busy hours hauling on weeds and trying to clear the whole area first. And there are playful bits of stinging nettle lurking under the ferns, and even brambles growing out of the rock wall, so you couldn’t even go into a weeding trance and just have fun.

Time enough for me to realise this whole area needs re doing.   First I am going to have to come up with a better mulch.   And the best one I can think of is about six inches deep of green composted chippings from the forest.   One I have that, and not before, I will need to carefully pull off the large river pebbles holding down the plants, lift up the fabric and try not to pull out all the strawberries as well.   Then carefully mulch all around the strawberries with the new thick mulch.   And I also think I might plant up a forest of verbena bonariensis here as well.   It is a rather dull part of the garden once the strawberries have fruited.   And the protection of the wall might mean that the flwoers will survive well, even during cold winters.   The self sown ones that I found here are fine and lusty.   So that’s an exciting project for late spring.

In the meantime here is the temporarily weeded solution. Plus 54 new strawberry plants.

And to continue my way all around the top edge of the potager I went up to get some sturdier gauntles and cleared all the weeds and brambles from the wall and slope.

It almost looks fetching.   Bring on the flowers.