Strawberries

[Blazerman]

I planted some strawberries last spring and they grew like crazy and spread out to take over two of my raised beds. This year they have a bunch of blooms which means i should have a bunch of berries right?

But i have never grown them before and i am not sure what i should be doing to help the plants produce nice berries.

Fertilize? Thin them back some? How much water? Any help would be appreciated.

[jdmidwest]

I have a few berries starting to show some red blush. They are about on the same time schedule as normal, unlike everything else. All of my plants are loaded with berries and blooms. It looks like a banner year for them.

You should be seeing little green berries starting to form when the bloom falls off. They will put on for several weeks.

You should keep them watered. Don't fertilize till the berries stop. I usually just hit mine with Miracle Grow a few times during the summer when I water them. The runners are young plants. You can thin the bed out in the spring when they start to put on small green leaves. Take the root clusters and move them to another bed. Thin them to about a 3 to 5 inch spacing between plants and you will have good vigorous growth.

After about 3 seasons, they tend to slow down in production. I will dig out all of the old plants, add fresh soil, and put in new root stock plants. The next season, that planting will be a good producer. I have several beds and rotate them around to keep at least 2 really good beds. The others will make a few berries in the first season that you plant them. Second and third season will be really productive. After that they slow down.

I put the old plants I pull out of the beds in an unused area of the garden. They will produce runner plants that are good starts for a new bed or give to a friend. And you will get a few berries off of them too.

Keep old dead leaves cleaned out to prevent ripe berries from rottening. Pull weeds. If you have a problem with slugs eating berries, put dishes of beer in the bed to kill the slugs.

[Blazerman]

Thanks JD for the info. just what i was looking for. This is the second year for these plants and, your right, they look like they will be loading with berries.

[ness]

Looks like good info, JD.

I pulled up my beds a couple years ago and moved strawberries to pots. It was mostly because I didn't want the maintenance required of a bed. The pots work great, but I don't have near the volume I used to.

[jdmidwest]

The plants seem to wear out with age like everything else. I restart with fresh plants every 3 years and it seems to work well. If a patch has a slow season, I will dig it up. Been doing them for about 15 years now and pick about a quart a day when they start, maybe 2. I have one 8x3 bed and 3 5' circle beds. I started another in the garden this year with about 70 plants I dug from last years runners. They should start putting on good next season.

I have heard commercial growers till alternate rows each year or so and let the runners fill the empty spot to generate new plants.

I always plant the ones that produce the smaller berries like Ozark Beauty or Everbearing. I have tried some with the giant berries, but they were never sweet like the smaller variety.

[ness]

A couple of my containers have Alpine strawberries. The flavor on those is amazing, but I don't get too many and they're tiny.