Hi all,<br><br>
I need some help with our various berry plants. I really want to focus on getting these berry patches established in the right way this year, because we eat so many berries and they are so expensive to buy at the farmers' market. Raspberries are $5 for a tiny box, and my kids demolish them before we even get back to the car. So, it makes sense to me to focus on these as a home growing activity.<br><br>
My questions are:<br><br>
1) Weeds. How do you deal with the weeds in the strawberry plants? I am willing to pull them up by hand, but they are so thick and there are so many of them that when I try to pull them up by hand, I am also pulling up all the runners to the new baby strawberry plants.<br><br>
If I could carefully pull up as many weeds as possible, is there something I could put down in between them to keep the weeds down? Where we go to pick strawberries, they always have black plastic down with the strawberry plants growing up in between. but my plants aren't quite that neat and spaced apart.<br><br>
2) Speaking of spacing, and crowding...with the strawberries, they seem to be coming back very thickly this year. Do I need to dig some up and move them, or just let them go and they will space themselves out?<br><br>
Last year, I didn't get much yield at all from my strawberry plants, because they got pretty taken over with weeds.<br><br>
3) And speaking of digging up and moving baby plants...the raspberry plants have lots of little babies coming up all around them right now. Should I dig these up and move them so it doesn't get so thick that we can't get to the plants to pick the berries? They are kind of growing into a giant circle instead of a neat row.<br><br>
And right now there is just grass around them, so do I need to dig up all that earth and get the grass out to plant the new baby plants? What direction should I go with the raspberries? Should I just aim for trying to have one longer and longer row each year? Or several squares that you can walk in between and get to both sides?<br><br>
I'm not sure what direction to go with the berries, because we have a big field and lots of open space with full sun. BUT, I want to leave a big enough space that my kids can still play ball, etc, and run and play in the open space.<br><br>
Any experienced berry growers out there? <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/love.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="love"> Thank you for reading!
I need some help with our various berry plants. I really want to focus on getting these berry patches established in the right way this year, because we eat so many berries and they are so expensive to buy at the farmers' market. Raspberries are $5 for a tiny box, and my kids demolish them before we even get back to the car. So, it makes sense to me to focus on these as a home growing activity.<br><br>
My questions are:<br><br>
1) Weeds. How do you deal with the weeds in the strawberry plants? I am willing to pull them up by hand, but they are so thick and there are so many of them that when I try to pull them up by hand, I am also pulling up all the runners to the new baby strawberry plants.<br><br>
If I could carefully pull up as many weeds as possible, is there something I could put down in between them to keep the weeds down? Where we go to pick strawberries, they always have black plastic down with the strawberry plants growing up in between. but my plants aren't quite that neat and spaced apart.<br><br>
2) Speaking of spacing, and crowding...with the strawberries, they seem to be coming back very thickly this year. Do I need to dig some up and move them, or just let them go and they will space themselves out?<br><br>
Last year, I didn't get much yield at all from my strawberry plants, because they got pretty taken over with weeds.<br><br>
3) And speaking of digging up and moving baby plants...the raspberry plants have lots of little babies coming up all around them right now. Should I dig these up and move them so it doesn't get so thick that we can't get to the plants to pick the berries? They are kind of growing into a giant circle instead of a neat row.<br><br>
And right now there is just grass around them, so do I need to dig up all that earth and get the grass out to plant the new baby plants? What direction should I go with the raspberries? Should I just aim for trying to have one longer and longer row each year? Or several squares that you can walk in between and get to both sides?<br><br>
I'm not sure what direction to go with the berries, because we have a big field and lots of open space with full sun. BUT, I want to leave a big enough space that my kids can still play ball, etc, and run and play in the open space.<br><br>
Any experienced berry growers out there? <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/love.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="love"> Thank you for reading!
