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Grass in the Strawberry Bed Again!!!!!!

17 years ago

Well, I busted my chops about three weeks ago (back when we were still getting rain and the ground was wet), pulling grass (Bermuda? Johnson? I can never remember which is which -- the kind with all the runners and little "knots" that tear up your gloves) out of the raised bed where I grow my strawberries. I mean I dug down and pulled out as much of the root as I could get and I thought I had a good handle on it. But by this Saturday it was actually worse than it was before! Grrrr. On top of that, there are ants. THOUSANDS of them.

Obviously I have not yet stumbled on the proper way to grow strawberries. I've been doing some thinking (since it's really too hot to do anything else) and I guess I'm going to have to start all over. Yesterday I cut off enough healthy-looking strawberry plants to use to make a new bed, cleaned and trimmed them, gave them a nice bath in some water with Epsom Salt in it, and packed them kind of snugly into three gallon-sized zip-lock bags and put them in the refrigerator. Then I sprayed down what was left in the bed with Round-up. More than anything, for the fact that I'm so hacked I just want to WATCH THAT GRASS DIE!!!!

At first I was just going to put the plants back in after everything was dead but then I realized that's just not a permanent fix. And dh announced he'd like to move the frame about a foot to the south so he can get the riding lawn mower between it and the apple tree without skinning up the bark.

So here's what I'm thinking, and please anybody that has any further ideas or knows what I'm planning won't work, just chime in. It's going to be a lot of work and I don't want to do it wrong this time. The raised bed frame is about 4' x 24'.

After the grass dies, I'll shovel out all the dirt, move the frame where DH wants it. Actually it'd be so much easier if I put it in a completely different place, that way all I'd have to do would be to pry up the frame and just leave the dirt there till I was ready to shovel it into the bed again. Hmmm. I thought I'd buy some 10-year black landscape fabric and lay it down first, edges sticking out from under the frame. I have landscape fabric already along one side to where the next raised bed is. I'd like to put it along the other 3 sides but DH is afraid he'll catch it with the lawnmower. Suggestions here? Then maybe a layer of cardboard to help keep the moisture in? Then put the dirt back in. I don't think mulch on top would work because then the runners the strawberry plants send out would not be able to penetrate the mulch to plant themselves and I don't want to have to spend time digging little holes for them in the mulch. Any advice here? The soil is good composted material so it's nice and loose but water just seems to run on through. That's good if we're getting rain every day but when the rain stops things start to die.

Further, what's the best stuff to use to kill these ants? Now, I'm all for live and let live but this is getting ridiculous. I've tried the cornmeal thing and mint and a few other home remedies and I don't normally use pesticides. But in this case, I'm ready.

And now back to the plants cooling in the refrigerator. How long can I leave them in there before they start to mildew? DH suggested I put them in the freezer. Could I do that? When I bought them they were dry, banded together with just little green buds and no leaves. Should I strip them down that far and dry them out?

Maybe I should just give up trying to grow strawberries altogether. Maybe I should just give all these plants away and buy new plants next spring, and plant alfalfa in the bed this fall, to till in.

OK people, what are your thoughts?

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