anyone tried waste sheep wool to keep strawberries clean?

[mrsbusy]

Hi - I need to protect my strawberries which are getting very dirty with all this rain - one side of the row is fine as they droop over the wooden side of the raised bed. I have some sheeps wool which has been used for insulating boxes of chilled food so it is good quality. I have seen somewhere that slugs don't like going over it. I have also heard that straw hides slugs - and there are a lot of slugs just now, although having been out night and morning after the rain collecting them up, there are now a lot less - think they must be speed dating as so many on the grass paths and oozing eggs - yuck.
This is my first season growing strawberries successfully - I put them in last year and they have set a lot of fruit - first bowl to taste this morning - yum.
Any suggestions on best way to keep the fruit clean please.

[nickdub]

Can't help with the wool question, but a layer of peat/shredded bark/leaf mould acts both as a mulch and helps to keep soil off the fruit.

[happyhumph]

Don't know about keeping strawberries clean but I know someone who puts the wool pellets you can buy around emerging dahlias and she hasn't had any attacked by slugs

[marchogaeth]

Don't mix sheep's wool up with the slug wool pellets - they are completely different.

As your wool is washed, it shouldn't have lanolin left in it which I wouldn't want on strawberries as it tastes and wouldn't wash off easily even if you wanted to wash your strawberries.

You could use it as you describe, I think but it won't stop slugs IME. They love the warm, humid conditions underneath. You can, however put some animal safe slug pellets underneath which you can more or less guarantee will only be taken by slugs.

Before you do anything though, play with that wool and see how greasy your hands are after warming it up.