Grow Your Own Magazine

I have some questions about strawberries

For the last few years I've been getting my strawberry plants from the garden center, I have no idea what variety they are as they weren't labelled and I didn't ask! but, they produce hardly anything, I'm lucky to get maybe 4 small strawberries and 1 large strawberry from each plant! this year they have produced loads of runner though.

so, do I need to try and find a new variety or is there something I can do to make the produce more fruit? Ideally I'd like enough fruit to eat fresh during the summer with enough spare to freeze for the winter....

another thing is, the few strawberries I do have are turning sort of brown, is this from getting wet? (I read you shouldn't get the leaves/fruits wet when watering oops I always do this and they have also been outside in the rain)

Thanks to anyone who actually read all that!

hi salina

do you buy new plants every year and get rid of the old ones? cause they last for about 3 years each plant, if you dont want the runners to grow knew ones, then cut them off as they take away from the fruit production, you can also feed them when they flower, well i did and i have loads, once a week with tomato food.

i only got 6 plants from aldi for £2.99, well the amount of strawberries i have had and the size has been great, some too big for my mouth, and thats shocking ha ha !!

do you know what to do with the runners to get new plants, as there are lots of threads on here. by the way i water with a hose and my leaves arent black/brown, also what happens then when it rains as that goes on the leaves?

hope this helps

SS

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Yeah I am letting all the runners (of which there are a lot lol) root so maybe that's not helping? My aunt hasn't bothered planting her runners and her have got a lot more flowers than mine..... :/

I put the runners into some soil and when they have rooted and start growing I cut them off the main plant, is that the right way to do it?

Hi Salina.

In year 1 you should get minimal fruit - it is year 2 of strawb plants that bear the most fruit. If you are getting new strawbs every year, what are you doing with the plants from last year?

I'm currently sorting out a strawb bed. It has about 30 strawb plants in it now [18 from co-op last week], but it is next year that the rewards will come.

Year 1 plants will have the runners rooted, so that they will produce in later years.
Year 2, the first plants will produce, and the runners will become year 1 plants.
Year 3, the original year 1s will be binned, the original runners will be year 2s and produce strawbs, and the year 1 plants will be runners from the second lot of plants.

This will leave me basically, with a 1.7m square strawb patch; that will be self-perpetuating and will produce enough runners [and more] to keep itself going. I will also give away the other spare runners to friends/relatives etc...

With the runners, peg them down and when they have rooted, you can cut them from the main plant. I'm going to cut all mine together later in the autumn; and any that aren't able to be planted where I want them are having a little plant pot full of soil underneath them, and being pegged into there for me to plant where I want it once the whole bed is cleared [it currently has other crops in it as well, as I started off with 1/4 of the bed just with strawbs].

Does that help?

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