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market-farming - Re: Hoophouses VS Snow

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Subject: Market Farming

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Brian and Jacqueline Potzkai" <potzkai AT hotmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Hoophouses VS Snow
  • Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 10:14:41 -0800


I want to know how your strawberries were this year - I plan to go back and
read your description of how you mulched and planted them - I lost most of

We used a turf fibre cover to mulch the strawberries with, pulled it tight and stapled it into the ground with 6 - 8 inch staples (we had to make our own staples so we could have them long enough and tough enough - used a # 10 gauge wire). It would have been a good idea to have laid a bark mulch or hay over this to protect the fabric cover from any sun damage and to help prevent weeds from coming up beside the young strawberries - but the weeds only have to be taken care of once after that the strawberry plant is big enough to cover the small hole that was cut into the fibre.

We got our turf fibre cover from the mushroom farm - for free - right time right place, but you do risk carrying over disease, etc. The nurseries here strongly recommend the mushroom manure as fertilizer and use it quite a bit (so do we now) by looking at their plants we were comfortable with using the covering. You can get a no-evergreen bark mulch from the sawmills that don't use cedars, pines, etc for $0, we have one in our town, the cost was $60 for the hire of a dump truck to pick it up.

I think if we were to do it over again I would do as a fellow strawberry farmer does and rotate the crops using the black plastic mulch (the stuff I absolutely swore off). She plants yearly and harvests off of 2nd year plants only, this is done because of the problem with mice and damage to the plastic. As soon as her crop is harvested she rips out the plants and plastic. Jacqueline

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  • Re: Hoophouses VS Snow, Joan Vibert, 12/03/2001
    • <Possible follow-up(s)>
    • Re: Hoophouses VS Snow, Brian and Jacqueline Potzkai, 12/06/2001

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