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We have quite a selection of new strawberry plants - various varieties and have read that for the first year you should remove any flowers that develop in order to maximise fruit bearing in following years, but also that in reality they have a useful fruiting life of 3 years before disease strikes etc.

Any strawberry experts offer advice here - remove or not ?

TIA

I am not an expert but am quite greedy and so did not remove the flowers from my new plants last year, even though the book advised me to do so.  I got a good crop. :P

The chap who removed all his flowers - on my advice - was not too happy when he saw my straws.  However his plants do look much bigger and healthier than mine.

Maybe he'll be the one who is laughing this year and has a much better crop than me.  We'll see... ???

I spent 5 summers working on a fruit farm - where mostly we planted triple crown plants (sometimes just singles). We always picked the fruit from them that year. They were best in their 2nd yrear & we replaced them after year 3. IIRC, it was 60 days from planting to harvest.
Maybe it's different when growing commercially?

I don't take the flowers off mine in the first year in a new bed, but think there is a sort of timing thing to bear in mind. I don't put runners in pots as I think there is a lot of effort involved in making sure they are watered and also that the roots don't freeze in summer.
When I want fresh plants, (and to be honest I don't always do this in the 3rd year, sometimes 4th or 5th) I let only two runners come, cutting off the rest, and make sure they are pegged down into the soil so they can root. Also remove any secondary runners that continue when the first is rooted, or any flowers that come during the autumn period.
Then I let them stay where they are until a reasonably mild day in Jan or Feb, while they are still dormant, and then sever them and put them in their new bed.
This has worked well for me, and I've never had a year without fruit, but then there are 3 beds operating on an ongoing basis.

Hi Spooky, Hi all,

I ate the fruit from my strawbs last year (their first) and let them make runners which I potted on over winter. I just extended my strawbery bed with the runners but last years plants are coming into flower now.
This year I`ll cut off the runners because I have no use for them and hopefully the plants will be stronger for that.
It seems to me that if you can keep the pests and weeds off your strawberry patch its a win-win situation.

Enjoy, Col  :D

Tsk been greedy also  last yr i ate the starwberrys and the runners that where produced also produced one or 2 starwberrys

err i ate them also ! but to be fair the plants look damned good this yr to !!

I undersatnd that Growers actually put them in a chiller in order tto get a second crop same yr ??

carl

i just loveeeee strawberrys !

thanks for all the advice, looks like I am eating strawbs this year :)

bob flowerdew did an experiment where he grew 2 rows of strawbs.  one row he removed the flowers and weighed the resulting crop in the second year.    the  2nd row he didn't remove the flowers and weighed the crop from BOTH the 1st and second years.  the crop from the 'flowers removed' row was over 3 times heavier than the sum of 2 years harvest from the 'non-flowers' removed!!!!!

Last year... also as first time strawberry growers.. we bought 12 plants. 6 'Ostara' and 6 'Robunda'.

We tried pretty hard to remove all the flowers as they appeared... the odd fruit developed but it was pretty hard to catch them all.

This year however... we have some giant looking plants that are all now in full flower and I'm expecting a bumper crop.

What we did do though was strike each runner that a plant shot out as soon as it looked like it was going to be viable... the net result. 11 new Ostara plants and 9 new Robunda

So, we now have a well populated bed that should be continually productive throughout the summer.

I'm really looking forward to the 2007 crop!

I'm religiously removing the flowers from mine, so it had better pay off  :P

What happens if you don't replace your plants after 3 years?  The ones I have in my back garden must be about that old and are looking better than ever...

The quantity of fruit diminishes until it becomes a waste of time. I'm in the process of getting rid of my old ones altogether, and I'll plant more in the autumn.

Im going to start a new bed with fresh plants later this year. I've had loads off my current bed the last couple of years, but this year some of the plants have died off, and some have got black spots on the leaves + couch grass has started invading the bed.

Can you grow strawberries from seed, seems like a cheaper way of starting off a new bed - rather than buying 30odd plants.

This year i also stuck eight runners in a grow bag, and put them in my greenhouse, they've gone mad! Loads of fruits, which look like they'll be ready in a week or two.

I've definitely seen packs of strawberry plant seed.

And I've also seen multi-packs of strawberry plants in B&Q.  £6 for 15.  Might be worth a go if they've got a 20% off weekend?

or take more runners from your greenhouse strawbs