[clydesdaleclopper]

I don't think I'm going to get a strawberry crop this year. They are all in full bloom but it's so blooming wet and cold there are no bees out. I just keep seeing dead soggy bees around 

[Lesley Silvester]

I ate my first two strawberries from the garden today. Best strawberries ever. 

[cloddopper]

None of our Cambridge favorite strawberries have produced any fruit yet .

However the small Alpine

I've considered pumping but the brutal fact is that the bigger stream is 200+yds away with a smaller ditch/stream 100+yds away... pipe alone gets expensive at any bore that avoids drops from resistance plus the cost of burying it or a reel system to coil it up.
Local farmer delivered a 1000L eurotank one year which was just enough to give every plant a decent drink via watering can over a few days. Spraying would need at least 2 such tankfulls

It'd be more practical to stick 2 eurocontainers on my trailer with perhaps a PTO pump if one could find one cheap enough.. they can fill a eurocontainer in a couple of minutes (actually would take longer since the stream is small)....

 

If you have a small portable genny could you use  one of the small ( £40 or so ) float switched sump pumps and take water from the small stream.

 You'd be surprised at the amount of water available in a small stream  that's only 2 inches deep  .

 I used to run a nuclear / chemical decontamination unit for NATO as well as the Brit armed forces . It was usually set up out in the middle of nowhere .
Many a time I'd just dig a three foot long ,foot deep trench  a foot wide to make a sump in the shallow stream bed and set my screened intake hose in it . Getting 1500 litres of water every  20 minutes for the decontamination showers was never a problem .

[pgkevet]

I've more or less given up with strawberries.. OH treats the place like a wildlife refuge with queues od pheasants, small birdies and squireels waiting with the chickens for several meals per day and helping themselves to my strawberry tubs too..... I'd have to grow them on hanging baskets or high posts to have a decent crop....or grow so many even the wildlife get fed up with them

Did get our first picking of gooseberries yesterday, blackcurrants still a couple of weeks from ripening....birdies more or less leave those alone.. but the reds and whites and blueberries are a battle. The cost of caging my patch would be silly but I do get a few handfulls each year. Perhaps i should just grow them by the acre???

[cloddopper]

A friend had a wall of strawberries  on the south facing wall of his small wooden barn .

He'd  run five 20 foot  runs of 6" guttering with stopped ends on the correct brackets,and planted the strawberries in peat& grow bag mix  which he was drip feeding most days with some hydroponic liquid in a header tank from inside the barn .

 He had marvelous crops and didn't suffer from slugs snail or any of the pests you mentioned.

[pgkevet]

The south wall of my barns are shaded by tall trees.
I had considered troughs attached to the top of fence posts but was lazy about getting it organised..plus it means more water carting.