Strawberry pruning

[tomtom87]

Hi all,

I have a strawberry patch in its second year. I took all the fruit off early last year to let the plants get strong...it worked and I now have a very healthy patch!

I've got quite a lot of fruit but an awful lot of leaf growth too. I know I should cut the greenery back once fruiting is finished but is it possible that energy going into the leaves will hinder the development of the fruit? Should/can I cut back some foliage now?

[redser]

I don't have the definitive answer but I think you should leave them be. Once you harvest them then give them a haircut. Should stand to them for the big year next year.

[boundtothesoil]

I wouldn't cut off any leaves. They are producing the sugars that will be transported into the developing strawberries, not the other way round. Plus, healthy shoot growth will produce healthy root growth. This will bode well for next year. I'm not sure how it works in strawberries viz a viz initiating next years flowers, but I can't see any reason to weaken your plants at this stage. Some people worry about the dense leaf canopy shading the berries, but they will ripen.

I'd also check whether it's a good idea to cut back the greenery after fruiting. I've never heard of this for the gardener. What's the reason for doing this?

[Martin H]

In the old days, they used to recommend setting fire to the straw and burning off all the old foliage along with any pests hiding there.

[redser]

It's a cleanliness thing. Gets rid of old foliage which may be harbouring disease or pests or just be passed its best and starting to die off. It applies to June bearers really. There is enough of the summer left after fruiting and renovating the patch for the plants to regrow a healthy amount of new foliage for next year. There is also something about new bud formation but memory fails me.

[redser]

I believe some commercial growers actually use lawn mowers and just run over the plants with the blades up high to miss the crowns.

[FB.]

Don't remove the leaves - it will reduce vigour and cropping in subsequent years.
The leaves produce the sugars (from sunlight, water and a few trace minerals) which feed the fruits. The leaves also feed the roots (export sugars to the roots in exchange for nutrients absorbed from the soil). The plants take the nutrients down into the roots for winter (that's why leaves turn yellow, as they are gradually stripped of useful materials) and the root-stored nutrients are used to kickstart growth the next season.

Remove runners which you don't want because they do take strength out of the mother plant.

[redser]

Out of interest FB, why do I read the advise to take the foliage off after fruiting then? Is that more for commercial growers?

This is the site I red ...
Strawberry Renovation | Strawberry Plants .org

[darloboy]

I am an avid srawberry grower (around 300 plants) and I have to say this year I did an experiment with my 100 or so second year plants.

I cut down half of them completely at the end of last season and the other half I left, to compare the results this year. So far its looking like the plants completely cut down are the better producers.

We were told to do this by an adviser at an RHS open day last year, and it has certainly paid dividends for us.

[rustylady]

I never cut the leaves off mine, just remove old crispy ones.

[FB.]

Out of interest FB, why do I read the advise to take the foliage off after fruiting then? Is that more for commercial growers?

This is the site I red ...
Strawberry Renovation | Strawberry Plants .org

My only explanation would be that it works the same as for pruning over-vigorous or cordon fruit trees; the loss of leaves stresses the plants that they rush to fruit because of their near-death experience.

So it's perhaps a balance thing, between energy into growth and energy into cropping. If the growing conditions are good I suppose they might grow and not fruit; like any other plant.

But certainly in the very difficult conditions here (dry, shallow, sandy-gravelley-chalky soil with low rainfall and no spraying) I cannot afford to lose any plant vigour. I always get best results from plants with the greatest natural vigour - whether strawberries or fruit trees (hence I grow a lot of triploids and heavy-duty rootstocks) - and summer pruning is just too much for my already-stressed plants.
But those blessed with good soil and plentiful rain might need a different approach to prevent plants becoming too leafy.

[FB.]

But certainly in the very difficult conditions here (dry, shallow, sandy-gravelley-chalky soil with low rainfall and no spraying) I cannot afford to lose any plant vigour. I always get best results from plants with the greatest natural vigour - whether strawberries or fruit trees (hence I grow a lot of triploids and heavy-duty rootstocks) - and summer pruning is just too much for my already-stressed plants.
But those blessed with good soil and plentiful rain might need a different approach to prevent plants becoming too leafy.

For me - and also in field trials - in difficult "home grower" conditions the more vigorous varieties and rootstocks often crop better than dwarfs.
One study of apple trees in difficult soil similar to mine found that the "vigorous" M25 only reached 9ft tall in about 15years (the dwarf M9 only reached about half that) and that the per-acre crop was around 25% heavier from the vigorous M25 because of its better ability to find the nutrients and water in a less-than-ideal soil.

In good growing conditions, the vigorous M25 made much larger trees which did not crop so well (but still cropped adequately) - the per-acre crop being about 20% heavier on dwarf M9 than on vigorous M25, not to mention the size of the trees and how harvesting was not so easy from the big M25 trees which had grown so well in the good conditions.

So, I suspect that in good growing conditions those over-vigorous M25's would have benefitted from hard summer pruning (as proposed for strawberries) in order to reduce leafy growth and encourage more fruit production.
But if the 4-5ft-in-15yrs M9's in difficult soil had been hard-pruned each summer, the trees would have been tiny - and probably so de-vigorated that they could not crop.

[redser]

Great info, thanks a lo FB

[Alison]

I've never taken any fruits or flowers off a strawberry plant before they're nice and red and always get tonnes of strawberries, they get bigger and more vigorous in their second and third year anyway. As FB says, its a good idea to remove early runner and then I only let 1 or a max of 2 per plant for the production of extra plants so as not to wear out the mother which I use to replace any three year old plants after they've fruited. At the plot I have a dozen first, a dozen second and a dozen third year plants every year which works very well and always gives a good turnover of stock. With regards to removing leaves, in the spring I remove any dodgy looking and old leaves and then after they've fruited give them a really good tidy up but removing any old leaves but leave a good central core, I feel that this reduces the risk of disease from manky foilage etc. Will then have another look before winter and whilst leaving old leaves will remove any that look dead or dying - best to leave most on though as it gives winter protection. One thing though, strawberries are very easy and so long as you avoid the vine weevil problem (nowhere near as bad in open ground) then I've never managed to kill one yet although I do know people that have drowned them.