[Gesar]

Hi folks just a quick question about my strawberry bed.

Is it ok to dig the plants up from my allotment and store them in my garden as i wish to give the area a good digging and possibly sow some green manure as the soil in that area is very poor.

[Pompey Spud]

Hi.

How old is the strawberry bed...ie are the plants themselves over 3 yrs old?

If so, than I'd dig them up and compost. You can than sort out your bed and replace your strawbs with new stock in a prepared bed elsewhere.

[Kleftiwallah]

Or if you'de like to keep the variey, now is a good time to dig up runners (with as much soil as possible).     Cheers,    Tony.

[Gesar]

They are new this year. Its a new allotment in which there was grass before the soil is what i would call heavy.

The ground cracks when it is dry and forms a kind of hard surface skin so my idea was to dig it all over again and add as much compost/manure as i can possibly get my hands on then plant a green manure to dig over in early spring then re-plant them.

Do you think that the plants would be ok and the soil would improve ?

[sunshineband]

Your soil sounds similar to ours when we moved into our plot, plus we have enough stones to build a road 

Digging in organics like manure and compost, as wellas green manure will certainly help. Old spent growbags etc are good too.

And your strawberries will survive in safely in pots at home until the new bed is ready 

[Gesar]

Aye that's the one the roman's must have missed that stash of stones while building roads i could have made it to Cornwall 

Managed to get a load of pots from freecycle so Happy Days

Thanks for the help