strawberries

Last year I tried growing strawberries for the first time in a strawberry pot in my small courtyard garden. The results were not impressive. I did, however, rescue the plants at the end of the summer and planted them in the rose bed of a friend's house where they have flourished and produced excellent flowers and young fruit. I am told that I should lift the fruit on to a straw base to ensure good rot free berries. I have no access to straw and wonder what is a satisfactory substitute. Plastic would seem unsuitable as it would retain water. Newspaper might contaminate with wet printers' ink. May I have sensible suggestions please? This is my first post on this forum.

Hopefully, Marcus.

 

Good question, you could try coconut matting or even wood shavings.
I have never had any problem picking up some straw from a pet shop.
Hope that helps, but I suppose getting coconut matting would be harder than getting straw.
Good Luck
FA

 

How about fleece.

 

Straw is readily available. In small quantities you can get it from pet shops. For larger quantities if you phone any horse riding school and ask them where they get their straw from, I'm sure they'd point you in the direction of a nearby supplier.

Straw by the bale is usually sold directly from the farms that produce it, and will cost you about £6 a bale I think (for the rectangular bales). For huge quantities, the farmer will often deliver, but if you just want one or two bales, I'm afraid its usually a case of driving to the farm and knocking on the farmhouse door. A local riding school should have no problem telling you who supplies them.

 

This year I ave been mostly using pre fermented grass clippings.

Pile it up till the heat goes out of it, then use it as a mulch. Working a treat.

 

Thanks everyone. I shall go the pet shop route. Why didn't I think of that? Perhaps because I keep no pets!

Marcus.

 

Last year we bought a big cube of compressed shavings from a horse riding supplier (also supplies chicken feed and stuff) for about £6 for our 4 chickens. We have more than 3/4 of it left. We saw someone paying £6 for a chunk of the same stuff in "The Range", for a rabbit, but about a 1/4 or less of the size we had. Heads turned as our jaws hit the floor!
Using shavings for the strawbs is going to be our plan. It should keep them clean and I hope it keeps the slugs off.

 

iv'e used hanging basket lining. had some left from a bag i had for my strawberry hanging baskets. seems to ok