Planting Strawberries and Chives

The garden is tilled, amended and ready for planting- well at least strawberries for the moment.  My desire is to have use plants in the garden that benefit each other- for example-according to The Family Kitchen Garden - plants in the onion family ward off fungal diseases- hmmm- chives fall into this category-love their pungent flavor both fresh and dried.  So- yesterday afternoon, I staked the bed to make sure the rows were somewhat even (the bed is not perfectly squared).  Bought twine for this -but unable to locate it- twirly ribbon streamer worked just fine. 

Next, dug holes 12 inches apart and placed peat moss and compost in the hole before setting in the bare root strawberry plant.  Bought 20 of these bare roots- really did not want to invest a lot of money in buying 20 plants at 3 dollars apiece- have had good luck with using bare root plants before so was willing to wait until next year to be able to harvest these berries.  Here is a picture of  one of the roots after it had been soaked- you can see the crown at the top.  Lauren said they looked like octupus or jellyfish.  We are planting both everbearing and june bearing varieties.

After setting in the roots, we covered them until the crowns were at soil level and sowed some chive and marigold seeds around the outer edge.  These are the tiny chive seeds.

Below is a shot of my finished work.........

and a picture of last year's strawberry plant that we planted in the front bed to overwinter it- needs to be transplanted into the new bed this afternoon along with another set of berries and chives.  Need to take some time to figure out the best way to water- especially as we had the cutting garden, corn, tomatoes and peppers.  This is my first year to garden and appreciate any comments or advice.