It just never seems to end with me and my strawberry patch! It is getting old…really, really, old.

Over the weekend (last weekend) I went out and really studied my strawberry patch. Remember, it was early April when I planted both “live plants” and “bare root plants” to fill-out my expanded strawberry patch. I dedicated 5 raised beds to grow a combination of Albion and Eversweet strawberries. Yeah, we like strawberries…a lot! That’s about 150sq’ of bed area. Or, a 75’ long 2’ wide row…two plants wide. Plenty of room to grow a huge patch.

We ended up putting in 20 live line plants of Eversweet, 25 bare root Eversweet plants, and 25 bare root Albion plants. We have maybe 6 or so plants carred over from last year. That is a great start for a great patch!

Well, as of last Sunday (a week ago)…yeah, not so good. Actually…pretty pathetic.

A quick assessment gave me the idea that we were losing ½ of all the bare root plants and maybe ¼ of the live plants. And the carry over plants looked sick. But I had followed all the instructions of the nurseries that I bought the plants from…and the plants were failing miserably. I estimated that within a month the patch would be full of little more than dead plants.

Now what to do?

Look, I followed the depth of hole, crown placement, wood chip mulch recommendation, and watering guidelines. The soil was healthy, well amended, and prepared properly. Yet, it was a serious problem quickly heading towards disaster!

So, on Monday morning I located an “expert” and they agreed to help me. I sent them pictures and described everything from planting to watering. Boy…did they read me the riot act! They sent me a “to-do” list to start right then and there. They estimated that I would save about 60 – 75% of the plants if I started immediately and do what they told me. Okay…trust buy verify.

I contacted the better of the two nurseries that I bought plants from, the live plant supplier. I explained what was going on in the patch and they told me what to do…which was different than the other nursery, way different from the “expert”, and also a bit different from their original instructions.

Then I went back to the “expert” and shared the new set of “to-do” from the supplier…thankfully they were patient…very patient. Step-by-step they explained to me why the new “to-do” from the supplier would not work…at all. Actually, they explained that the plants would all be lost and why they would fail. They made sense based on my gardening knowledge in other areas and it matched up with common sense. More garden work to be done!

So here is what the new plan is to save the patch:

1. Remove all the wood chip mulch.
2. Cut off any dead or sick looking leaves and stems from the plants.
3. Put a 1tbsp ring of organic 4-4-4 fertilizer around the “drip edge” of the plant, not near the plant crown.
4. Scratch that into the surface, then water it in really well.
5. Then put about 1oz of a 6-12-12 fish-based liquid fertilizer around each plant at the drip edge, not near the crown.
6. Then put a 6” – 8” ring of worm castings around each plant, ¼” – ½” thick. Don’t mound it up around the plant crown. Here’s the problem…it would have cost hundreds of dollars to do this step based on the number of plants and the cost of worm castings…even in bulk. So they said place it around the most mature plants and the healthiest of the live plants. That I can do.
7. Then use clean, weed-free straw as a mulch on the entire bed, but keep the mulch 1” away from the plant crown. The straw will settle over time, they wanted 2” total after it settled.
8. And I had to change the irrigation strategy as well…timing and emitter placement.

I didn’t have the worm castings or the straw on-hand…worm castings ordered from Amazon (best value) and will pick the straw in an hour or so from the local feed store.

So yesterday I spent the rest of the day removing all the wood chip mulch, applying the fertilizer treatment, and doing most of the irrigation changes. The “expert” was emphatic that the straw mulch go on today at the latest…so today it is. I won’t get the worm castings until Friday so that has to wait. When the castings get here I will simply pull back the mulch from the identified plants, add the worm castings, then get the mulch back in place. Once that is done I will sit back and watch everything go perfectly and strawberries will just jump into my mouth!

Here is what I had when I thought I was done a couple weeks ago…

Then today this is what I found…

Here is the tour of the new and improved strawberry patch. Strawberry Patch 2.1…

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Related Articles –

• GARDEN : Strawberries – Planting Bare Root
• GARDEN : Strawberries – Planting Live Plants

 

 

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