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[road's end farm <organic101@linkny.com>]

On Oct 31, 2006, at 12:50 PM, Mark or Helen Angermayer wrote:

> Any ideas  on the best time to mulch strawberries?  We've had a strawberry
> patch for three years now and never winter mulched.  This year I'm trying to
> do things right.  Jim's mentioned he's had good results with pine needles as
> mulch so I thought I'd give them a try.  I've been able to aquire bags of
> needles but don't know when to put them on.  How much should the plants die
> back before I cover them?  (So far the plants' foliage is as green as ever,
> we've only had lows of 30F.  And trees are losing their leaves but not fully
> dormant.)  Also after covering up the plants, do you have to remove the
> mulch in the springtime, or will the strawberry plants push up through the
> mulch pack?

I try to get the mulch on after it's been cold enough so that they're at least mostly dormant, but before the low temperatures fall too far into the teens (F). Some years there is no such date. In practice, I mulch strawberries usually sometime in November, shortly before Thanksgiving if I can manage it. Sounds like you're a little warmer there than I am. -- If the field's too wet, you can mulch after the ground freezes up some. Here this may well be one of those years.

I haven't used pine needles, I use straw mulch (easier for me to get; I don't know which is better). With straw, at least, you need to pull most of the mulch back in the spring when the new leaves start growing; unlike garlic, they won't push up through it well on their own. You don't need to get every bit, just most of it. I pull it into the aisles, where it discourages weeds some (nothing stops weeds entirely around here) and gives a good surface for pickers to work on if ground is on the wet side. As berries get the spring weeding (I'm organic, and hand weed them) some of the mulch gets tucked back under the plants to help keep the fruit off the ground; but you have to be careful mulch doesn't get over the berries or the berries will rot under it.

--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly