Tell me about strawberry plants, please?

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Tell me about strawberry plants, please?
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chez

Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 35935
Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 5:13 pm Post subject: Tell me about strawberry plants, please?
How long do strawberry plants last for, ie, are the perennial? And how do you make more strawberry plants from the ones that you have bought? Is that what runners are?

NorthernMonkeyGirl

Joined: 10 Apr 2011
Posts: 4630
Location: Peeping over your shoulder

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 5:20 pm Post subject:
They get a bit scruffy after a couple of years, all mine put out so many runners that there was no oomph left for fruit! Yeah you get baby plants about every foot(ish) on a runner, you can end up with giant chains of plants.

chez

Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 35935
Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 5:23 pm Post subject:
So if you bought plants now, you would get baby plants that you could keep propagating on, each year? And pinch out the runners after you've got what you wanted, so they put their energy in to the fruit? I've just had a rush of blood to the head and bought a mixture of fifteen plants for early, main crop and late fruiting.

NorthernMonkeyGirl

Joined: 10 Apr 2011
Posts: 4630
Location: Peeping over your shoulder

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 5:26 pm Post subject:

Chez wrote:

I've just had a rush of blood to the head and bought a mixture of fifteen plants for early, main crop and late fruiting.

Why am I not surprised?

I think this year I would remove all runners, concentrate on getting established and fruiting; then maybe next year let your best plants of each type shoot out runners and go for fruit from the others?

chez

Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 35935
Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 5:28 pm Post subject:
Perfect plan. I have some box thingies for raised beds that finally this year are getting put in to use - we have an octagonal patio with a concrete path going to it at the bottom of the garden and I reckon we can stack them against the edge of the patio itself so that Nenna can reach them to garden using her walker

Pilsbury

Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 5645
Location: East london/Essex

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 6:20 pm Post subject:
Think of strawberry plants like spiderplants, they put out the same sort of stems with baby plants on the end you can pin down and they will root, tuen you can snip the stem and have a new baby plant.

Shan

Joined: 13 Jan 2009
Posts: 9075
Location: South Wales

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 7:08 pm Post subject:
chez, if you want me to pot up any runners for you, let me know. We have a very well established strawberry bank.

Mustang

Joined: 15 Jul 2005
Posts: 768
Location: Sunny Suffolk

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 9:24 pm Post subject:
GQT today said not to let this year's babies/runners fruit, and so let them bulk up for next year. Said it made a large difference to quality/quantity of the fruit next year. difficult to wait though..

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 9:40 pm Post subject:
The aim of strawberry plants is to take over the world. They do not allow the incompetence of the grower to discourage them (I have found). For an early crop, I grow Honeoye in pots,they are currently in the greenhouse. When the fruit matures, I transfer them to my conservatory, where they are checked at hourly intervals, and the minute they are ripe enough to eat.....

madcat

Joined: 24 May 2008
Posts: 1265
Location: worcester

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 10:53 pm Post subject:
Blackbirds get up earlier than people , I never got one fruit and the plants were mental. The original 6 plants turned into world domination by strawberry several runners per second it seems.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Mar 09, 14 11:14 pm Post subject:
what they said especially about netting against birds and gourmet hounds

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15966

Posted: Mon Mar 10, 14 7:22 am Post subject:

The original strawberry plant will fruit well for perhaps 3 years. The ideal plan is to build it up and fruit year 1, so pick out all runners, allow a few runners the following year, but not enough to spoil the fruit, setting the runners for the following year. Year 3, fruit and perhaps a few more runners so you always have some runners at year 2-3 and fruiting well.

As others have said you need constant vigilance over runners and fruit thieves. Perhaps Nenna might like to be in charge of runner removal, but you will have to net against birds.

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Mon Mar 10, 14 8:33 am Post subject:

Roaming off topic, when at horticultural college, I was told that one year the RHS badly worded a question regarding the cultivation of strawberries. The question asked what do you do with a crop of strawberries after harvest. The expected answer was to do with cutting off the foliage and removing the runners. One student interpreted the question differently and wrote "I serve them with whipped cream and a glass of Champagne." She got full marks (well it would be a woman wouldn't it

)

chez

Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 35935
Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset

Posted: Sat Mar 15, 14 3:22 pm Post subject:
My plants have arrived! How far apart should I plant them?

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Sat Mar 15, 14 9:52 pm Post subject:

Chez wrote:

My plants have arrived! How far apart should I plant them?

You could Read This Friendly Manual

Back garden: raised beds, about 15" each way. Allotment, very similar spacing to that suggested by the RHS. (Last year I had a magnificent crop of Red Gauntlet.)

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