Crocus - the first flowers of spring 2008
Without intense care no harvest. Normally at least a daily inspection with hands on is needed. Every few days a more accurate care and control to hand select / remove snails or remove larger weeds that might cover up the strawberry plants. The plant needs lots of hot sunshine during the period between blossom and strawberry harvest.
Small weeds and grass actually would be beneficial to have between the plants. Most farmers lack to courage to let all the small weeds and grass survive. As you can see on most of the pictures here, the fields are usually completely cleaned up from all other growth.
Here in Trinidad most strawberry fields are sprayed regularly, weekly or more often with chemicals - fungicide and pesticide or as seen here, the toxic chemicals are added to the flooding water used for irrigation once or several times a week.
In true mixed culture as common at home in private garden, there is absolutely NO need for any chemicals of any kind nor for any fertilizer! Strawberries are rugged plants and survive / prosper easily all year if planted amidst all other flowers and plants of your organic garden. Just see how nature does it - wild strawberries grow in wild grass and forest without any chemicals or fertilizer.
In album Fruits of the Philippine islands
Yellow flowers
The back to back gardens are a unique feature of the flower show at Tatton Park and they are arranged in groups of four all over the showground, what I like about this is that as I walk around the show I stumble across a square of gardens and keep seeing ones I haven't seen before, also you can get a really good look at them because they're nicely spread out. Out of 27 back to back gardens at the show, five were awarded the coveted gold medal, best in show went to Reaseheath Alumni with '5 a day with hidden play' a garden dedicated to growing and eating plenty of fruit and veg.
'A garden for bees' (Gold) designed by Ness Botanic Gardens highlights the importance of our buzzy little friends. It's beautiful too and more than dispells the myth that wildlife gardening has to be wild and woolly. 'Butterfly Journey' (Silver-gilt) is another wildlife friendly garden at the show. 
It's packed with the sort of plants we could all try to grow more of, to attract native butterfly species into our gardens. I noticed a fair amount of black in the back to back gardens, 'The back to basics garden' uses black to dramatic effect as a backdrop and in the planting with two stunning Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy' and a generous sprinkling of Cosmos astrosanguineus, another garden which features this plant heavily is 'Urban retreat' (Silver) which also uses black as a backdrop but mixes acid greens through the dark flowers and foliage, a great combo. 
'Reflection' (Silver) uses colour but it's much more gentle here. The decking and fencing is stained a soft grey and is set off by touches of galvanised metal used as edging and in the form of poles used throughout the garden as a suggestion of a boundary. These double up as plant supports too, this is an idea I might well take away with me... 
A garden that addresses a very common problem is 'The scented walled garden' (Silver) and it speaks volumes that I had a good long look at the garden, admired it, made notes, took a photograph and still had not realised that it had been designed with wheelchair users in mind, it proves the point that a garden when well designed can fit a specific brief and be gorgeous too. Info from:
Private Club
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