 Well, afternoon everybody my name's Chilt East and we'll talk about selecting and managing the site where you strawberries will be planted. And that is an important step and sometimes we'll just use what we got and sometimes you know sometimes I work with pecans and different thing crops and somebody say well I got some land here that nothing will grow on what do you think about planting blueberries on it or strawberry you know pecans or something it's like well if you got a hard time growing bermudagrass we're going to have a hard time growing another crop so good land is good land and poor land is poor land, but here's a few things to keep in mind when selecting a site, our fruit crops strawberries grow best in full sun. Any shade is more shade than I want sun from daylight to dark is what I'm after. If we can increase the hours of daylight, I would internal drainage on the saw. So it's we got to have it where the water drains off but I'm talking about draining through the saw these heavy clay I work with a lot of heavy clays well I don't like them. A lot well in a drought I guess they're good but usually I don't I don't like that because they hold too much water. But we still use them and we'll talk about add an organic matter to them and those are things that can help low line areas not only could water flow to that area. But that's where the cold air sells. So if we could avoid the low line areas and you don't have to be the highest point in the county but if you were the highest point. If someone else was lower lower than you that's where the cold air would drain to just be higher than your neighbor. And so planting on the uphill side with the cold would settle to the low places that's important. Think about your irrigation source if you're using municipal water or a whale, but we obviously have to irrigate and that's what hurts us sometimes when we go to do our crop rotation is having a field that will have access to water in but obviously we got to have it. It's not always practical but if we had a windbreak on the north side that sometimes can help. It's we always want to say location location location but you it sometimes it's not as important with a pick your own or something strawberries is a good crop that people will come out for but if they can see you from a main road. And then a lot of times and we do it we make more production but we can put that parking lot in a field you know and we're giving up field space for parking, but we got to think about that before we plan as little things like that. I took this picture this person it wasn't strawberries but planting a garden here every year this is in my hometown. Well I can tell you that corner it plowed it up planted every single year. And that corner of the garden that's what I would consider a poor site and I should have some summertime pictures I could show it's always poor crops and that end of the garden. So anything we can do to fix it where that water would not stand there is worth doing. Things we can do to improve the site that we have would just mentioned raised beds for strawberry produce we put a lot of vegetables on raised beds. The higher the bed the better I like it it takes a house of a tractor to make a tall bed and you got to have the right equipment will get to that later but six or eight inches I've seen them taller. But but that would be a good thing. We want to saw test well in advance of planning. I mean a lot of times we're saw testing now for for this these the fall crop what we're planting this October, and we're going to line if we need it now so give it time to work. And it always stress planting cover crops at this time of year is wherever my strawberries will be planted this October I would be planting a cover crop. Well, this month, and we'll talk more about cover crops in the next few slides. Jesse mentioned crop rotation, if at all possible. I mean I wish I had three or four fields that I could rotate around to but again let's go back to the parking and distance you are from your water source and can you see it from the highway or you know that that sometimes interferes with our crop rotation. That's a big deal if at all possible to rotate, and we can grow other crops watermelons or pumpkins or something where the strawberries were. It seems crazy but even if we did not have a cash crop like the watermelons or pumpkins that cover crop is improving that soil do not let it just lay there until I'm ready to plant strawberries back again. When we're planting if at all possible you can run the rose north and south allows more light on the plant. I do not want rose running up and down a hill and I'll have more washing so sometimes I have to plant with the contour of the land so that depends. You can get strawberries in containerized or bear root and bear root is cheaper but I really like the containerized grow well. Here's some equipment on the left really we use that in high tunnels it doesn't make as tall of a bed the one on the right is a better that that is capable of making a tall bed. We have some of the lot of strawberry farmers by their own and that's probably not a bad idea. We have some of this equipment. And our experiment stations that you can can rent for from the experiment stations and some extension offices. They're in charge of loaning this out to farmers or you got to have a tractor and you got to pay for the plastic in the drip line you just get the equipment, but that could be a savings to someone just getting started in the business. And there are people that will come make the beds for you for a cost. But this is so expensive. We want to do everything we can do to make the best crop possible and plastic culture would be part of that process. It looks, it's hard to tell from a picture but that is a tall raised bed right there. You're looking at it at least six if not eight inch tall bed. And when we have a lot of rain, that's a good thing. The taller the bed the better but it takes a big piece of equipment to make a bed and you can do it with a smaller tractor I would say at least a 70 horse tractor for one row but 80 would be better and a larger one might possibly be be better. But it's important when making that bed to make it right. And if you're making the bed I encourage you to make the bed without the plastic or the drip line just practice making the bed and what I'm mainly interested in is the center of that bed. I don't want it to hold water it's going to be crowned in the center you can't tell it from this picture, but it's a little point or a crown in the center. So make these beds and because if you don't have a big enough tractor the ground's not plowed up enough the center you can tell it in the center that the and it's going to settle right there and water will stand but you can tell it in the center that the bed is not properly made so practice before he's put that expensive plastic on. We can't do a meeting without talking about soil testing. So testing is so important when I go to farms I mean or when people call they talk about weeds disease insects and nutrition. And that nutrition comes up an awful lot and I would want to be so testing now for what I'm doing this fall. This in the extension office can help you tell you what kind of fertilizer to put down at planning, we can help you with the information that goes through the drip lines, we can tell you how to apply that as well. If plants aren't going growing properly, we can take or the farmer will we can send you form I sent one to a farmer this week, some leaf analysis forms that we can you take a samples it tells you how to do that and we can send samples to our lab and check for nutrients in the leaf so we know what's in the ground we know what's in the leaf we got we know what the plants need so from those. Those are just tools we use to help our crop do better again, it is an expensive crop. So we need to do everything we can do to to get the best out of it we can get but it's a soil test is a good place to start. I love this publication cover crops for Alabama you can go to our website and type in cover crops for Alabama. And this will pop up I'm not going to read all that but I'm going forward just to this is just a little clip of some of a chart that was is in that publication. And this is not every cover crop in the world listed but it's several of them, and it, you can see some of them are winter cover cover crops and summer cover crops. What if you have strawberries planted in that area well I'll show you, we're not going to plow everything we can't do the winter cover crops unless we're doing between rows and I'll show you some pictures of that. But when the strawberries are done if strawberries are going back to that area and nothing's going to be planted there I would be planting a summer cover crop where those are so there's two times a year we're planting cover crops and this talks about the grow summer or winter. It talks about the seeds you need per acre at planting but it's all available online. This is a picture of a farmer. And he planted this cover crop is called Sun Hemp and that's his favorite cover crop and I really like it too. It adds really the most this is summer but it adds so that means it's we planted after the strawberries are done or we planted this time a year where strawberries might be go might go this October, but Bush hogging it down. And this is one way this particular crop will add several tons of organic matter per acre it actually adds one of the most tons per acre that cover crop will add more than any other. And it adds the most organic, I'm sorry, yes organic matter but also nitrogen per acre this fixes pulls nitrogen out of the air and it'll fix 150 pounds of nitrogen in the soil that's released as like a slow release. And that's it being Bush hog down and before long will plow that up and strawberries will be planted. This is a picture of a couple of fields that you can plant right or wheat oats, I like oats but something's you lay the plastic but before you punch holes and set the plants out they throw the seeds out the cool season or wintertime seeds, the cool season crops, and that's what it looks like in the spring, and then that grass that that cover between the rows and you can see there a picture on the right where that cover crop has been killed but there we go and organic matter to the to the soil, and maybe we're not walking in mud as we pick strawberries and hopefully it didn't wash over the winter now a lot of people don't like anything between the row Middles. I see it both ways but I really I do not want this to wash and I like having a cover in between. Jesse mentioned the row covers for the frost protection, a lot of people call them frost blankets but these, these covers. One if it's a blooming and we're going to know we're going to get frost that is one way to help protect that bloom so it is labor putting them out the wind is sometimes blowing it's aggravating. But I think every farmer should have a row cover just in case you need them sometimes with cover and uncover several times during the year and yes it takes labor to do that, but this can save this can add a few weeks to your picking. It takes 30 days from a strawberry to go from blooming to kind of fruiting to where we pick it. So if we get if something damages that bloom, that's just one berry you're not going to be picking 30 days from then. So think about that that can be money in your pocket have the row covers. If for some reason you got the plants later they didn't grow off well or we had an early early cold in the fall. Maybe we might add a row cover sometimes it might get cold one or two nights but then more for another two or three weeks. We might add a row cover that's rare, but my throw cover on just for that couple of nights keep those plants growing, especially if they're young plants and again you didn't get them sell out when you should that might can hit you in the fall. Here's a water wheel planner and this really speeds things up in planting the implant by hand. You can plant with this this piece of equipment goes behind a tractor to put poke holes in the plastic, put some water in the hole and then you someone comes behind putting the plan in the holes and setting these strawberry transplants out. This speeds things up considerably if you've got several acres to plant and here's some guys doing the same thing we usually plant these in a double row. They're planted around the first part of October, we we've got to order in advance a farmer I spoke with this week has already ordered his plants now for this fall. But they don't always have to be ordered this far in advance, but that is that's you can't wait till the fall to find some you've got to make that connection early on. The plants are sell out as you can see in a double row, they're about 12 to 15 inches apart in the row and in this double row they're about 12 inches apart from from one plant to another down the road. We'll have an average about 14,000 plants to the acre but it just depends on row spacing if you got us your middle of your rows are six feet apart and might be more than that. And the spacing down the rose if you're spacing is 16 inches apart down the row and your rows are seven feet on center, you might not get 14,000 plants to the acre. One thing to keep in mind this is so important I see this a lot it's so hard not to do it to, but don't plant the plants too deep. There's a crown on that strawberry there near the the saw line and if it gets buried it's either going to die or just not grow well and containerized plants. You can even move the ground as possible if they're lower than that so I can wash in and cover the crown, but it can stand in water to with a with a lot of rain. So I don't like them lower than the the soil in that bed. Beirut plants, look at where they were growing at that nursery, and wherever that saw line came to at the nursery where they were dug at that's how deep, I would want to set these plants out. Here's my contact information. You don't have to call me though you got an extension office in every county of the state, if you call them, tell them your question they will put you in touch with the right extension agent that can best answer your question.