Strawberry query

[Mugsy]

Last year I opted to buy in some new disease resistant runners, Cambridge favourite and Alice, put them in a new purpose built raised bed lots of homemade compost etc.
Accepting it was a poor summer lots of them produced masses of foliage and no fruit at all, those that did fruit were not exactly plentiful.
Anyone else had similar abundant foliage and no fruit, too much water ? too rich compost ??? and any ideas how to remedy it

[veg4681]

Anyone else had similar abundant foliage and no fruit, too much water ? too rich compost ??? and any ideas how to remedy it

Welcome to the vine. It may help to put your location against your profile so that we know where you are.

Same here. I got 3 runners (Honeoye) from Wilko early last year and although they grew fine, I only had 2 fruits but lots of runners and abundant foliage like you mentioned. I don't know but they say it's a normal practice to let the strawberry produce lots of runners to prevent fruiting in the first year as the idea is to encourage them to be more productive in the 2nd &
3rd year. As if anybody has the patience to do that! I know someone had a bountiful harvest from their first year but presumably they broke the rule and chop off most runners .

You and me, well we did our bit so this year, it's our turn to enjoy a decent harvest. But I would make sure to feed your plants with the appropriate fertilisers, make sure the soil is right etc and you may need to think about protecting the fruits from the birds (netting?).

BTW I got over 15 runners from my 3 plants. I have more new runners and strawberry raised from seeds this year but I'm planning on breaking the rule of snipping away runners on half of my stock. Good luck and hope it goes well.