I don't grow strawberries now but I used to, for many years, and it's age that's keeping me from growing them now.

The best mulch for strawberries is red or white pine needles--They are the long needles. If you know anyone who has the trees they might love you to come and clean the fallen needles up under their trees--my neighbor did.

The needles actually make the berries sweeter, they cut down on watering in hot weather and protect the roots in winter, they keep the berries off the ground so they don't rot and--- lets just say it's a good mulch. The strawberry growers use straw because they have so many to do and it's readily found, but home growers have this option which is better.

You should really have 2 beds one for the second year plants and one for the stringers. You will get the most berries from the second year plants. The third year they start to go down hill and don't produce as many berries.

At first I used to transplant in the fall but found I lost a lot of plants, so I switched to the spring. As the plants were sending out stringers I moved the mulch aside a little so the stringers made contact with the ground and then put the mulch around the new plant.

In the spring I cut the stringers if they hadn't already detached and planted them in the new bed and mulched them. Any that weren't interfering with the original plants got left there.

After the berries were done I raked the needles off the old bed and saved them or just left them if they were pretty rotten and dug out the plants and composted them, amended the soil and waited until spring again

If you have limited space you might want to use the bed you've prepared to grow some fast growing veggies like radish lettuce and onionn sets. Don't forget to work some organic matter in before you use it to plant your stringers in the spring

If you follow these directions, you can manage your bed so you have terrific berries for 6-7 years. Plant your first plants down the middle of a bed about 4 feet wide. The following early spring, thin ruthlessly to 8-12 inches apart. After the harvest, take out all the plant in the middle third of the bed (all the plants you put in the previous year), cut back foliage on the others and fertilize. The following spring, thin again, and after harvest, removed all the plants on the outside third of each bed--the old plants from the previous year. The next year you remove the middle, and so forth.

Managed this way, beds last for years.