I never cover mine at all, neither do the growers here in Adair Co. Ten acres would be hard to cover. But I live on a hill that allows some cold air to drain away and so do most of the growers

Charlie,

If they've had quite a bit of exposure to cold weather already, you can go ahead and cover them up if you choose. If they haven't had a week or more of very cold nights, I'd leave them uncovered and let them have some cold exposure. I don't mulch them until mid-December to late-December unless we're going below 10 degrees and sometimes I don't mulch them that much at all.

Strawberries have to have some exposure to cold temps in order to go dormant, so you want them to experience that cold and go dormant before you mulch them. If you mulch them before they've had enough cold exposure to go dormant, they can fail to go dormant and continue to grow actively under the mulch and then set blooms early under the mulch and then lose them to very cold weather in mid- to late-winter.

I don't usually mulch them much at all but I'm way down south. The further you are north (and esp. if northwest), the more important it is to mulch after they've had a chance to go dormant. In a warmer-than-average winter, strawberries here in southern OK barely go dormant at all, but we can't 'create' cold conditions if they don't exist, so I will leave them unmulched in order to deliberately get them as much cold exposure as I can. (This year, having become cold pretty early down here, I would think they've had enough cold exposure this fall already, but then we've had a few days lately in the 80s, so that may fool them into thinking it is spring.) Some years the weather see-saws so much that the poor plants don't know what is going on. I don't worry or fret over them. I am, I suppose, a 'casual' strawberry grower. If they make it, they make it and if they don't, they don't. They do grow better for me in containers where I can control soil moisture and drainage than they do in the clay soil we have.

I've linked the OSU Guide to Growing Strawberries. It has a paragraph or two somewhere in it that discusses when to mulch.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing Strawberries in Oklahoma

Thanks a lot you all, I choose not to mulch until further notice. Even tho I have some fairly clean straw, I just don't want a lot of grass etc coming up later. This is in a raised bed.

Charlie