First strawberries! For those that grow them, how big is your patch?
First strawberries! For those that grow them, how big is your patch?
Our kids wish we had more. I'm not sure which verity these are, but they put out tons of runners which makes me not want to put them directly in soil.
Tips for a bigger crop are welcome :)
I had wild forest-strawberries a few times the last 3 Weeks while hiking. They are everywhere if you look for it. No Idea how to grow them, tried it once but they dried out. Raspberrys are easy to grow, mine get larger every Year.
We have a raspberry bush that I was... silly enough to put in the ground. It's spreading like crazy (about two feet laterally from where it was last year). It's in a raised bed, so hopefully it doesn't go down through the 10" or so of dirt before popping up outside the bed
Looks delicious! Good job, llama🦙! Last year I got good at strawberries and I’m so eager to share what worked for me. I grow Rainier which are June bearers. If your berries ripen pretty much all at once they are June bearers, if they ripen continuously all summer you have ever bearers. Either way here are some basic tips. When they finish flowering cut back the entire plant to about 5 cm. Looks and feels awful but works great. Then add an all purpose fertilizer. This is the only time of the year you fertilize- after harvest. Thin the plants until you get 40 cm between each plant. As the plant grows back, remove the runners. It sounds like you’re getting runners now. Remove them. You want your plant focusing on berries. I mulch the beds with straw over the winter and remove it in spring.
Each strawberry plant has a lifespan of about 5 years. Year one you should pluck all the flowers off, forcing the plant to grow bigger first. Years 3-4 will be the biggest harvest. Year 4 or 5 you will collect the runners off the plant for your next bed. Let them grow some roots before removing them from the mother in the early fall. Plant them in a new bed so you’re doing crop rotation. Next summer don’t pluck the flowers off, they should be considered 2 year old plants now (this is technically their second summer alive—- at least that’s my understanding. On this point I’m getting mixed reports online) that’s where I’m at now, going to collect runners this year and move the bed in fall as my plants are now 4.
Sorry to dump so much info but I went from small berries devoured by slugs to 2.5 gallons in the freezer off 19 plants. We were shocked at the difference. I think the most important part was thinning them.
I appreciate the dump and will give it a through read through! This is year 2, but my second strawberry pot had a rough winter so I'm considering it year 2.
It will be very interesting if these are June bearers or ever beaters. I have no idea what they are TBH, but it looks like there are some new flowers that haven't turned into strawberries yet. This is both nice and not nice. Nice that we will have strawberries all season. Not nice because we're probably only going to be getting 1-4 strawberries per day because they're not in a very big pot so there aren't a ton of plants.
Alpine/mountain strawberries are well behaved and fruit all season long. The fruits are smaller though.
Ha, this might be the worst of both worlds. Aggressively spreading and smaller fruit. They are pretty tasty though. Time will tell if they're ever bearers.
The last two years we have bought Strawberries in a hanging pot. The runners end up with dangling strawberries on them which increases the yield. We didn't winterize them correctly so we got a new basket this year. They spread like crazy so you don't want them directly in the yard.
Wild strawberries Fragaria virginiana are the North America native variety and are a little more well behaved but will still create a mat that will smoother things under them. Best to buy the plant and let it spread