Strawberries, getting the best out of the plants

[strawberry1]

Strawberries on the allotment were hopeless, clay soil, wet and slugs. I gave up on that. I bought new plants and set up lots of strawberry planters at home, they were good all through to frost, then next year I got vine weavil. I used nematodes

I transplanted several and used runners from last year and the foliage looks good but I have only had very few strawberries of any size but lots of tiny imperfect ones. Watering has been hard as we have been dry for weeks, apart from this weekend. I use a strawberry feed. I now see some of the large flowers on good sturdy stalks and I know I will get some more big ones, I also have lots of leaf cutter bees nesting in bamboo canes very close by and they are loving the strawberry leaves

I have a spare raised bed, 8 x 4 feet on the allotment with a good humus content, the basic soil structure up there is clay. I am thinking of potting runners from strawberry alice, which has survived through thick and thin, mara de bois and maybe the variety called ken muir. I was thinking two mounded rows covered in weed fabric and using my strawberry growpots on top of the mounds, holes cut of course, this will raise the strawberries a bit more and I can cover the whole bed with bird net as I already have hoops in place

Ken muir strawberry was new last year so I haven`t tested it properly but I do know that alice and mara are excellent

What do you think?  I originally bought the growpots for tabletop growing, which was successful but watering was very difficult so I am not doing growbags again, also too hard to carry down and get rid of. I would like to use the growpots again

[strawberry1]

[pigeonseed]

What are you asking - whether your plan to move runners to pots at the allotment would work?

I'm a bit unsure of the plan - is it planting them in the ground, in holes in weed fabric, or in pots, on top of weed fabric?

[Digeroo]

I was not very good with strawberries until realized that they are voracious feeders.  There was a programme on tv showing the commercial companies drip feeding them 24/7.   

I was recommended to use litre pots for runners, and used recycled compost as well as BFB and got regular waterings with nettles added mostly because they are in my water butt.  By early September the pots were full of roots and they were planted out with more recycled compost, and more BFB and then in the spring they had more feed, potash and mineral dust.    They were then mulched up with more recycled, and later straw. 

Even from the first year plants I had huge strawberries which tasted wonderful.

Now they have stopped fruiting I will cut off all the leaves and feed them even more.  I am lucky because I do not have to cut back the later leaves at the end of winter because the deer come and do it for me and clean up the plants. 

Here is a link to Ken Muirs guide to strawberry growing.

http://www.kenmuir.co.uk/image/data/pdf/Growing%20Guides/CONTAINER%20GROWING.pdf

I am a fan of Cambridge favourite, marshmello, vibrant (formally marshmarvel), and malling centenary which produces the most perfect looking strawberries ever.