Feeding Strawberries recommendations please

[Digeroo]

When do you feed strawberries and with what?

[Digeroo]

[kt.]

I move my strawberry beds after every fourth season.  Each new bed has 6" depth of manure in it.  As for topping up - at the end of the second years harvest I top up with a very thin layer of rotted manure about 1/2 to 1 inch deep.  Other than that they are left alone to their own devices; less a haircut at the end of each season.

[Digeroo]

One of my allotment neighbours recommended potash for improve the flavour do you think this is a good idea?

[calendula]

potash generally good for fruit production - I sometimes feed my strawbs with seaweed meal they never seem to need much else

[Digeroo]

Seaweed meal rather expensive if you cannot make your own.  Last year they got blood fish and bone but I think that produced too much leaf, but since it was their first year it did not matter.  But this year I want fruit, lots and lots of fruit.

[calendula]

I use it in water, seaweed that is so a very little goes a long way - if the plants are not too old then you should get loads anyway without doing much at all to them and don't forget to keep the runners

[Tonythegardener]

I feed my strawberries on diluted comfrey tea.  Its percentage NPK is 0.74:0.24:1.19 for the Bocking 14 comfrey
(http://organicgarden.org.uk/gardening/comfrey).  

To compare, kelp meal has an NPK ratio of Seaweed (dried): 1.1-1.5/0.75/4.9 , and homemade compost ranges from 0.5-0.5-0.5 to 4-4-4 (depending on what ingredients you use)

I give them a good feed when the new leaves start to come in Spring and then another feed just before Wimbledon week.

[shirlton]

We use potash on all of our fruit but it can be very expensive. Last year it cost us £20 to do all of the fruit, Happy to learn about using something cheaper

[cornykev]

I use the rain water from the sky.    ;D ;D ;D

[birdsrfun]

I use tomato fertiliser - high in potash, seems to work

[calendula]

the next best is to mash some comfrey in water, lovely stinky stuff and use that on your fruit or just mulch with comfrey leaves

[shirlton]

Might give em a dose of tomato food then

[OllieC]

In my fruit farm days we used a fairly balanced NPK feed early on, followed by higher Potassium & low Nitrate once the flowers appeared. So I use growmore followed by tomato food.

[Digeroo]

Many thanks for all the posts.  All sorts of suggestions.  I have a good source of comfrey locally it is a bit of a weed along various byways.   It makes a great deal of sense to use the high potash only at the time the fruit is forming to maximise the effect and use expensive fertilers economically.

My strawberries have already been mulched with compost to cut down on the weeds. 

I took quite a few runners last year and have plans for more this year.  The best runner plants are almost the same size as the original plants.  So I am looking forward to a good crop this year.