Spring cleaning my strawberry patch

Today was a nice dry balmy day, perfect for cleaning up my strawberry patch and get it ready for the beaux jours. Normally I should do this on sunday according to the lunar calendar, oups! I have found a new mulch, hemp straw or paillis de chanvre and it looks great! I wasn't happy with the results from the compressed mulch I tried last year. Besides putting in way too much and then having to remove it, in the summer it dried up and made it very difficult to water.

First remove the previous year's mulch by raking it out of the way. I removed mine completely rather than put it back for aesthetic reasons as I am changing mulch this year. Remove any weeds that have managed to grow and either put them in the composter, or throw them in the potager! They will dry up and continue to enrich the soil and act as mulch as well. Cut away dead or damaged leaves from the strawberry plants. While I was doing this I thought, in nature those leaves would stay on the ground and nourish the plants, so I left them there around my plants. I also remove unwanted stolons and replace any underdevelopping plants. Then add compost using a griffe, or cultivator. Mine looks like a long four-prined rake and makes the work quite easy. Arange the soil around the plants and spread the hemp straw or the mulch you raked out of the way around the plants. Now all that needs to be done is add netting to keep the hungry birds away!