Apple Tree Grass Garden

I live on an acre of land in zone 7a, and I'm trying to establish an teeny food forest in my front yard. Dreams are big, but for practical and financial reasons I have to start small.  I started with apple trees, marked a perimeter, then filled the whole thing with a truck bed full of mulch. Hindsight being 20/20 and all I didn't sheet mulch, and it really wasn't enough mulch.  I then got a bunch of strawberry plants from my mother, and some yarrow from runners off of a bigger plant in my garden.

Fast forward several months, I now have a simply lovely bermuda grass apple garden. The strawberries are also living their best life, so when I pull the grass I inevitably also pull poor innocent strawberry runners. Funny that the desirable plant and the unwanted one both have such a similar growth pattern...

I have now started planting any type of bush bean seed I can get from my local library's seed library, and I planted a full packet of crimson clover from Baker Seeds. What are my best options to kill out the grass and keep the strawberries?

Also, what berry bushes would be excellent for the bush layer? I would like something my small children could go pick and eat, so not elderberry. It is full sun, but VERY damp.

Any and all tips and advice would be so appreciated! I am very much a novice. Two years ago the husband and I decided to stop bagging lawn clippings, now I'm organic gardening, sewing, composting, and trying to convince him to do away with the lawn all together, On the Paul Wheaton eco scale I've gone from a 0 to a 2 in about two years, with an envious eye on level 3.

Hi Jane, awesome on converting the yard to food forest, I'm working on converting most of my lawn as well.

I like using leaves as a mulch. They will mat together well if big enough and will smother almost anything, but can also be easily pulled back to plant perennials or annuals.

Blueberries have been a really good berry as a companion plant for me. Thornless blackberries have been great as well, they are just a little more wild, but I love that about them.

Best of luck with your food forest!

Steve

Thank you for the suggestions, this evening you will find me with my yard cart in the corners where the wind has raked the leaves....probably bashing the leaves with a rake to drive off snakes first!

I love blackberries as well, there is huge thicket of them on land immediately adjacent to my property to the North. (I call them blackberries. The names of all the different hybrids and subspecies is discussed fervently in a foraging group I'm in.)  

It is wonderful to watch the different species it provides habitat to, see the different plants interact, practice my novice foraging, and watch succession in action. If the blackberry thicket wasn't there that would be the obvious choice, but I have an abundance of blackberries right over my back fence. What a hard life, am I right? So far I've ID'd cattails, blackberries, mullein, vetch, and honeysuckle.