Topic: Planting strawberries

[Plottie]

Hi all
I've a number of strawberry plants that I have grown in my garden in containers.  I have made lots of new plants from their runners and I want to plant out all these (established plants and babies from runners) into my plot. I have a couple of questions:
1. I think they have to be planted out by mid August for the best fruiting next year - is this right??
2. Do they need any feeding when planting?
2. Willl I need to cover them to protect them from rabbits (now) and frost (later)?
Plottie :-*

[derbex]

1 Yes -or earlier, but they'll give you some fruit anyway.
2. Better to prepare the soil with lots of compost, that should keep them going for the three or 4 years they'll be there.
3. Don't know about rabbits, but they seem to survive frost with me.

If you can bear to (and I can't) you shouldn't let them fruit in the first year.

Jeremy

[ina]

I agree with all of what Derbex wrote except not letting them fruit the first year. I often only keep my plants one year. I take the strongest runners each summer and make sure I plant them before the middle of August and have great crops the following June.

In the winter, rabbits eat hearts out of many strawberry plants at our complex so we protect ours.

[Hugh_Jones]

Always plant the new runners in a separate row from the older plants, then after 3 years you can remove the oldest row every year. This will also have the effect of rotating the crop every 3 (or is it 4?) years.

[derbex]

Flash of Lightning -Doh - Smacking forehead smiley.

Good tip Hugh, I was wondering how I was going to move my strawberry bed, now I realize that I don't really need to -just expand it a bit and free up the other end next year. In fact do what the strawberries want to do and 'walk' it along.

The not fruiting in the first year bit is really on the assumption that you are keeping the plants for 3-4 years -and probably that you have an established bed as well. I also grow some in home-made growbags in the greenhouse -these do fruit in the first year and are kept for one year only.

Jeremy

[Hugh_Jones]

With a lot of the modern varieties of strawberries there is no real reason why you should not let them fruit in the first full season - they are bred with this purpose in mind.  What is more important is not to allow too many runners to form - the plant will be much stronger in later years if you only allow one or two runners per plant and nip off all the others as they form.  It is a common (but understandable) failing to root much greater numbers of runners than necessary and finish up with lots to give away, but a debilitated parent plant.