I'm in zone 5b, E. central Illinois. We have clay soil too.
According to our Coop Extension, the first week of April is the time
to plant bare root stock, such as fruit trees and berries. When my 50
strawberry plants arrived last year, they were dormant and looked
pretty lifeless. Planting them was a chilly experience. But after a
week in the ground, they were perking up and showing new growth.

Strawberries are a cool-loving perennial and are supposed to be
planted early. There's no need to cover them. They need to put out
new roots and leaves before you let them flower and set fruit. My
instructions (from Coop Extension, I think) said to pick off the
flowers for the first 6 weeks, as I recall.

I ordered from Nourse Farms, a berry speicalist. You might like them
better than Park's. I think their URL is www.noursefarms.com

Hope this helps, Dianna


On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 23:36:21 GMT, "Tim B" wrote:

I ordered strawberry plants by mail from Park Seed, thinking I'd cancel the
order if my local garden center has nice everbearers at an affordable price.

My question is: Park wants to ship them March 15. I asked them to hold off
until April 15 and they were sort of giving an implication that they're
about done shipping them by then. I am zone 6a and it's often cold and wet
then. To me it's a crapshoot, wetness and temperature-wise until the last
week of April/first week of May. They're going in soil already worked up
last fall for them but I have always avoided working wet (clay-ish) soil.
But I have read that if you don't have everbearing strawberries in the
ground by April 15 you can forget having any yield this year. I'm hoping
that's a comment not appropriate for my zone. Hey, if they're in the ground
on April 15 I'm going to have to cover them most every night. Ideas?



_______________________________________________
To reply, please remove "fluff" from my address.