In the summer we pick off diseased leaves, pick off bad berries, which is very labor intensive. Hours of backbreaking picking and grooming of strawberries pays off for the Bittners and their son, Moss, however. For home gardeners Bittner suggests growing strawberries on raised beds mulched with porous landscape cloth. The weed fabric is nice and that would be best for strawberry beds. Bittner also suggests beefing up the soil with plenty of chicken and steer manure, seaweed or seaweed extract.
Calcium sweetens up the berries.
In her experience, Bittner says backyard strawberry growers are challenged by the crop. It takes a lot of learning how to grow strawberries. They are tricky. It's not really a successful backyard crop. We have a lot of people come in and buy berries from us because they have a few plants at home and they are competing with the slugs and they are not fertilizing enough.