I assume you are talking about mulching for winter? If so, some folks mow down the leaves and stems and mulch over everything. Depends on how cold you get there. Strawberrys can take some very cold winters and some folks don't mulch at all.
And yes, the crowns are the center ball of root coming out of the soil.

I live in Wisconsin and did not mulch my strawberries at all, and they survived and flourished just fine in the spring. I am trying mulching with shredded leaves this year just to see if there's any difference in them next season.

I don't mulch but I cover the entire bed with branches from Christmas trees when soil is hard frozen to prevent unfreeze. It also prevents the damage from deer and rabbits.

I live in Zone 5, but my major problem during the winter is drought. With no moisture in the soil, there is no soil heaving, so I mulch the strawberry bed after a good rain in October and keep it covered until April. I use pine straw, as it is plentiful in my yard.

Catherine

Because of variable snow cover, I mulch my strawberries with straw. I have read that its best to do this when the strawberry plants are flat (from frost). My strawberry plants are not yet flat, but between the calendar and this weeks forecast, I did mulch the strawberries yesterday. I like straw because in the spring when I pull the straw off, I keep some in the bed and in the row. As the plants pop up, I work the straw around them and the berries stay nice and clean without as much creepy-crawly insect damage and mold.

It surprises me to find so many replies in harmony with my line of thinking. Over in the fruit forum the concensus seems to be that you mulch in the fall and remove it all the following spring. I've been advocating early spring mulching for the sole purpose of KEEPING THE BERRIES CLEAN for quite some time now.

Some people apply a blanket of mulch long before the crop has gone dormant for the season and that can do more harm than good. In central PA the plants often are not dormant until early December.

But an antigermination spray applied to bare ground just prior to applying a reduced amount of straw in the early spring will minimize annual weed growth as well as eliminate any need to rake excess straw from plants in the spring. By proper timing of the spring straw application the plants will emerge new growth over the straw and it will serve to KEEP YOUR BERRIES CLEAN.

I'll be planting strawberries in the spring for the first time, so the advice about mulching to keep the berries clean is well-taken, at least by me!

Would my old stand-by mulch and weed-snuffer, cardboard, work just as well around the plants? I have lots of leaves as well but I'd think they wouldn't be a very stable mulch around relatively flat strawberry plants or keep insects from munching on the berries. I'll probably cover the plants with them in late fall, though.

Anney, those mulches would probably be fine as long as you don't hinder the attachment of runners to the soil. Those runners become "daughter" plants which are the primary producers of the following years crop. That aspect of strawberry culture in the matted row system usually dictates that you pinch the flowers from the plants on the initial planting year in order to get plants to send runners sooner. If you do plan to harvest a crop the first year, apply some sort of mulch around the plants to keep berries clean.

Twenty five years ago I used shredded newspaper to mulch the berries. My website has pictures of my children spreading it on the crop. Advantages were that there are no weed seeds in newspaper and slugs were never a problem since they can't make a slime layer on the newspaper. The problem is that this material is regarded as litter. You don't want any paper product blowing into surrounding areas. I also had to rake the thicker layers of newspaper off the plants in early spring so that they would not be smothered.

I have some strawberries in an old washtub and am wondering how I can best protect them over the winter. Should I surround the tub with something as well as putting straw over top of the plants?

Wow, thanks for all the replies. I didn't know if anyone would bother to answer at all, so this info is great! After reading everything, I think I may have made a mistake or two, but none that aren't fixable. (I hope at least.) I mulched with cedar mulch and had planned to shove it to the sides come spring, but I guess the runners would have a hard time getting through that. After reading your info, I now know that next year I should a) wait until the plants go dormat before I cover them, b) mulch with something much much lighter c) shove it to the side come spring to keep my berries nice and clean!

Thanks everyone!