Spring Straw Removal from Strawberries

When you remove the straw, the leaves can start to photosynthesize and produce food for the plant, instead of expending the plant’s energy reserves to grow. By partially removing the straw, the plants can begin to receive sunlight, but the straw can still stabilize soil temperatures and keep the soil cool to slow plant growth. It may seem counter-productive to slow growth in the spring, but keeping the growth slow can prevent frosts from damaging flowers and fruit that were pushed too early. Keeping straw close to the plants also prevents rain from splashing soil on the fruit, discourages weed seeds from cool-season annuals such as chickweed from germinating, and discourages soil heaving as mentioned. You can place the straw back on the plants in the case of a predicted light frost, but this is practical only for small plantings.

Some growers also apply straw mulch to plasticulture plantings for winter protection, either alone (if they can keep it from blowing off) or underneath a row cover. Straw mulch should be pulled off plasticulture plantings too but can be kept alongside the rows of plastic to keep berries clean and weeds at bay. If applied under row covers, the row covers can be pulled off or put back on depending on how you want to manage bloom and fruit ripening.

Straw should be taken off as soon as the plants start growing new leaves in the spring. Typically, this occurs around a soil temperature of 40 degrees. For matted row plantings, this usually matches up pretty well with the time when the first forsythia blossoms are opening—this can serve as a reminder to check under the straw for new leaf growth. You definitely want to remove the straw before those new leaves grow much, you don’t want the petioles to get much longer than an inch. Before removing the straw, you might want to take a glance at the forecast to make sure that very cold temperatures (low 20s and teens) aren’t expected right away if you do have some new tender leaves. They may need a few days to harden off.