Strawberries and Sheep’s Bums
It seems a strange combination, but this year I’ve used daggings – the bits of mucky wool around sheep’s bums that farmers cut off to prevent fly strike and other things – as a mulch under my strawberries. You can buy this as sanitised, pelletised stuff, but I prefer to use what is available!
In theory, and it now seems in practice, a) slugs don’t like to crawl over the wool (when it’s dry), b) the wool keeps the berries off the earth and c) the rotting down wool will help improve the soil for next year. Sounds like a win-win situation.
Yesterday evening I was in a similar position to the England cricket team – wanting to get things wrapped up before Sunday’s forecast rain. So it was hands and knees in both strawberry beds and the result was 8 pounds of lovely ripe berries and very few damaged rejects.
Strawberries (out of their) sheep’s clothing!
Nant y Bedd 