Why are my strawberries struggling so badly?
Hi r/berries, I've been lurking for a bit and was hoping my first post would be more triumphant, but I'm a first time grower and having trouble I can't diagnose. I'm hoping someone here can spot what I'm doing wrong. I bought a 25 pack of Albion Strawberry Bare Roots from Burpee, and after one month about half of them appear to be dead or dying.
Conditions:
- Climate: Albuquerque, NM. Zone 7b, and with the quirk that our summers can be brutally hot & dry, and the sunlight is quite intense due to the high altitude. Multiple local nurseries have told me that "full sun" can mean as little as five hours here.
- "Garden" (pics 01-03): Two raised beds 6-8ft long, oriented north-south, next to a cinderblock wall that shades them until about 11am (as of mid-April). (While strawberries are full sun plants, I judged this acceptable due to the previously mentioned guidance about sun hours here).
- Growing medium: 1 part vermiculite, 1 part perlite, 1 part peat moss, 1 part compost (mushroom & steer manure). Basically mel's mix with a higher ratio of organics.
- Amendments: Azomite and Espoma Berry-Tone, applied according to package labels
- Planting: March 18 from bare roots (4.5 weeks ago as of these pictures). Soaked in lukewarm water for ~45min before transplanting, and I tried hard to follow the common advice "make sure not to bury the root crown".
- Mulch: Partly pine straw from my trees, partly a coco choir mulch product from Costco
- Water: I've been checking the soil moisture levels and top watering 1/3 inch every 3-4 days. One thing that has surprised me is that this potting mixture is staying more moist for longer than I expect.
Problems
- Dead plants (pics 4-5): About half the plants appear to be dead. About a quarter of the total never "woke up" at all after transplanting, and another quarter put out leaves but have since shriveled up.
- Dying plant (pic 6-8): I caught this individual today, which appears to be going the way of the others. Including these pictures in case it helps diagnosis.
- Damaged (eaten?) leaves (pic 9): This doesn't seem to be related, but a couple plants have damage to leaves that look like something's eaten them. I haven't seen caterpillars or similar, and other than the pine straw all the materials in these raised beds came from big box stores or nurseries just before planting.
I'm pretty confused and a bit disheartened, since I put in a lot of research and labor (and cost) to control as many variables as I possibly could. I'd really appreciate any insight more experienced gardeners might have on my situation.
For what it's worth, the tomatoes, last year's dwarf blackberry, and 5 bare root blackberries I have in fabric grow bags all seem to be doing fine (pic 10), even though I need to finish mulching.