Top tips for growing strawberries!

[Rose C]

Hello growers, it's the editorial assistant from Grow Your Own again with another growing question I would love you all to answer. As always, we like to include your comments in our allotment feature of the magazine, so I am interested to know your top tips for growing strawberries. Do you grow your strawberries from seed or from plants/runners?

I would also like to thank all who contributed in my last thread. I very much enjoyed reading through all of your comments.

[nickdub]

My main difficulty with growing strawberries is stopping birds and mice from eating them before me. I've been experimenting with raised troughs and suspended pots in my poly-tunnel - I can't say that I've got a good system yet, but I have made some progress and did get to eat some fruit last year.

In the past I've always grown from runners, but last year I started some from seed too - I've now got about 12 seed grown plants - so it will be interesting to see how they go this year.

[Gman]

Ooh. I’ll follow this with interest. Have strawberry bed planned for this year. Was planning to use runners but will be interested to know the consensus.

[lottie dolly]

My tip would be to keep control of the runners the plants send out,especially the first year,and keep well watered during the dry growing season

[SarrissUK]

I buy potted plants every few years, and in between I take care of the runners. I have tried to grow both normal strawberries and wild strawbs from seed, but they have never germinated.

[Aberdeenplotter]

its essential to remember that strawberries have a limited productive life, most lasting three years at most, so to ensure continuity of production I plant two new rows of 6 plants every year and at the same time the two earliest rows planted are removed.

[Greenleaves]

I propagate the runners from two year old plants. Starting with new plants, I remove the runners in year one to give the plants chance to create a healthy root system. I only select runners from healthy plants to avoid propagating desease.
The process repeats every 3 years.

[Snadger]

I am trying to replenish my stock this year by buying bare rooted plants. These are a lot cheaper than pot grown plants and up until now seem to have been a good buy. I have three varieties, earlies , mid and late fruiting. I potted them up as soon as I received them through the post and they very quickly established themselves on the bedroom windowsill.
They are now hardening off and will be planted out in three separate beds in March/April.

[Nicos]

On my last plot I had a strawberry bed the width of a roll of fleece.
I used to keep the plants under fleece until they started flowering.
At that point I used to roll the fleece back whilst I was working on the plot to allow the flowers to be pollinated.
Once the last frost was over I'd remove the fleece completely.
I used to get strawberries a good month before anyone else!

[annie8]

I grow some strawberries in the greenhouse and some in the raised beds. The greenhouse ones are usually ready earlier so it’s makes the season a bit longer.

[Chris Hulme]

I grew mine hanging from homemade troughs last year. This seemed to stop the slugs getting to them. They're also in a netted tunnel to stop the birds eating them. I then bring them into the greenhouse around December which gives them a head start in the spring. The varieties are mixed up, so going to gradually renew them with earlier, mid and late fruiting. Then after a few year replace them with runners.

[It never rains..it pours]

Looks good set up

[veggiechicken]

I plant 3rd year strawberry plants and unwanted runners beneath trees and shrubs as ground cover, where they can spread to their heart's content. Reduces weeding and they often crop as well as the ones I nurture.

[It never rains..it pours]

Weeding........whats that

Suppose tip I do have is that if you have to plant strawberrys in the same place again, like I had too, out of the various varities I tried that supposidly were Verticillium wilt resistant, Christine was the only one that was 100% in my book. It also seemed slightly less bad for vine weevil in my early greenhouse pots this autumn but still bad

[Logunner]

Worked well from hanging baskets in our south facing garden. Now have 35 bare rooted plants potted up ready for the raised bed on our plot, will be covering with net as soon as they are fruiting.