Strawberry Plant Maintenance

[rao]

My summer fruiting strawberry plants (variety "Alice") finished fruiting late June and I removed all the old leaves and tidied up the bed. Ten weeks later, the plants have all produced a mass of new leaves and look better and healthier than they did pre-fruiting.
They are not producing any new flowers.
My question is should I cut back the new growth now to enable the plants to re-grow again before the winter or let them over-winter as they are and cut back early spring.
I have just cut back my everbearing strawberry plants and these are showing new growth after a few days.

[simon12]

I don't think there is any benefit to removing anything thats not dead

[Vince G]

Monty Don went at his with the shears on GW the other week!

Always give mine a bit of a trim for the winter.

[sparrow100]

The new growth will be feeding the roots for the winter - unless they are showing disease/dying off, if you cut them off now you will stress the plant unnecessarily. I am guessing Monty hadn't trimmed his post-fruiting and was doing it then.

[rao]

Thanks for replies.

[WeeGarden]

Hello,

I didn't realise that I had to cut back old growth after fruiting. I've just been out attacking the runners and came in to Google when I could cut the leaves - I think I was expecting them to die back or something. Would it be too late to cut back now?

[Alison]

Just cut out the dead and grotty leaves and leave the rest as is.

[WeeGarden]

Thank you Alison!