Thinning Strawberrys

[haza1981]

So I have a large overcrowded strawberry patch and I was wondering if I should remove some leaves to improve circulation and get some sun in?

[rustylady]

The usual advice with strawberries is to keep them cropping for around 3 years. After this they are past their best. Could you simply dig out the really old plants after they've finished cropping? With strawberries you should also keep an eye on the runners and stop them after one or two plantlets form - otherwise they try to take over the world and your bed ends up a tangled mess.

[chris]

I didn't thin the ones out on my plot that I took over.. There's over 100 plants in a bed about 7' x 7' - alot were runners. It's extremely overgrown, but still producing a lot of strawberries.

[rustylady]

But there will come a point when a lot of the plants are not productive cos they're too old, and if it's that tangled you can't tell which are which. I would strongly recommend restricting the runners.

[Lorraine2]

I agree with rusty lady you should dig out the old plants after cropping and start afresh with the new runners

[rustylady]

I think the ideal situation is to have three rows of strawberry plants, the oldest in row 1, 1 year younger in row 2, and the newest in row 3. Each year you root runners to form a further row and take out the oldest row. Of course this means that you end up with a movable strawberry bed, but I'm sure the idea could be adapted for raised beds, even if it means rooting the runners into pots instead of the ground.

[haza1981]

All the plants are from last year. It's a new bed. I was just worried about the sun not getting them as they only seem to turn red on the parts the sun hits. Also worried about mildew.

[rustylady]

OK Haza, so how many plants do you have and how big is the bed?

[Rabidbun]

They'll turn eventually - even the ones under the leaves have turned for me, though they took longer.

Same happened to my bed last year (a last minute runner attack in October caused chaos as I didn't notice till March); I think I'll pull out anything that looks sickly/dead and leave it at that - they seem relatively happy packed in there at the moment at least. Will probably cause me issues next year though, annoyingly, as there's no real way to top up the level of the raised bed without covering the crowns, so they're just getting lower and lower in there.

[haza1981]

OK Haza, so how many plants do you have and how big is the bed?

about six foot by 4 and probably between 30 and 50 plants.

[oldie]

That may just be a few to many!

[Aberdeenplotter]

That may just be a few to many!

Understatement of the week. I have two feet between plants and two feet between rows.

[haza1981]

Ha ha Yeah may be overcrowded then. I would say most probably 30 plants......Guess i'll see what happens this year then re think

[haza1981]

Here is the patch and my 5th gathering of strawberries this month

[Hillwalker]

Those look beauties! Thanks for posting in tastyvision.