How did they do the background?

Can anyone tell me how to design a background as seen on :www.calstrawberry.com

Also how would I design a frame around the images like the red farmes around the pictures.

thanks

http://www.calstrawberry.com/images/homeBack.jpg

if you look at it there, what it looks like to me is made the strawberries on one layer. Above that layer they filled a small section to the right of the picture with white, then Gaussian Blur. After playing with the blur a little, maybe adjust the opacity of it.