Bare root strawberries

[Matty1985]

I ordered 35 bare root strawberries off the Internet and they turned up a week early, which is great, but annoying because I wasn't prepared for them. I unwrapped the roots and they appeared fairly dry so I soaked them in water for about an hour while found as many pots as I could and the compost. I have potted them into various sizes pots based on size of crown and roots, roughly 20 odd have been put in 9 cm pots and the rest going bigger up to 4 or 5 daddy plants which went into 8" pots. I watered them all in and placed in the greenhouse (unheated) and covered with white fleece cloche (touching the leaves) for the next few days while I get baskets/planters etc ready. Current temp in GH is 5.2C but wether app predicts nighttime temps to rise to 10C.

I now have a few questions as I seriously had no idea what I was doing and decided I had to pot them before roots dried out completely and killed off.

1) have my immediate actions already resulted in likely death the the plants?

2) will the fleece touching the leaves/stems be a problem?

3) will transplanting them into different containers and disturbing the roots cause any issues?

4) i plan to keep some of the smaller plants in the greenhouse all year on staging I have yet to build and pinch out the flowers to encourage better crop next year. What size pots should these guys be in to allow them to grow sufficiently and how tall will the plants likely get?

5) what feed will encourage early root growth? I have bonemeal and tomatorite in the shed, would either of these be beneficial?

Many thanks for reading!

[Alison]

You're very unlikely you'll have harmed them as they're very resilient. Personally I'd take the fleece off, as they don't need protection and will benefit from more light. Transplanting shouldn't be a problem but remember, if you're leaving some in the greenhouse you'll have to ensure enough pollinating insects can get in.

[Alison]

Tomato feed will promote fruiting, come spring a bit of chicken poo would be good.

[lolie]

Strawberries don't get tall unless they don't have enough light. Then they start sending out leaves on longer stems which block the light even more. Mine tend to stay around 6-8 inches high during fruiting season and I cut them back severely when they get taller.

Transplanting shouldn't hurt them. I'm trying to get mine to die back at the moment so I put them in a new container, much closer together, the other day when it was really hot and they haven't missed a beat. I re-pot mine all the time they still multiply like crazy.

Don't baby them too much. They're a pretty hardy plant and you're more likely to kill them with kindness than anything else.

Are you planning on dividing them at the crown and also keeping the runners? They tend to start propagating really fast and your pots might be too small when you suddenly have three crowns where you previously had one.

[Matty1985]

I wasn't planning on keeping the runners as I presumed it took energy away from making roots and fruits? I thought it was best to just nip them off. Thinking ahead though I could keep a couple of plants to harvest runners into fresh 9cm pots for new plants next year.. ? Is there an article or thread anywhere that explains how to do this successfully? Saves me spending on fresh plants next year.

Also I have no idea about splitting crowns.

[lolie]

The runners will establish themselves in the soil and once they've done that you can snip them off the parent plant. I just find that I get way too many runners so I cut most of them off but a few always escape my notice.

My runners generally produce fruit the same season, but that might be climate dependent.

I just split the new crowns off with a small garden trowel and plant them. My strawberries tend to produce new crowns much earlier in the season than they send out runners, so I guess when you want to increase the number of plants should help you determine how to propagate new plants.

[Alison]

I wasn't planning on keeping the runners as I presumed it took energy away from making roots and fruits? I thought it was best to just nip them off. Thinking ahead though I could keep a couple of plants to harvest runners into fresh 9cm pots for new plants next year.. ? Is there an article or thread anywhere that explains how to do this successfully? Saves me spending on fresh plants next year.

Also I have no idea about splitting crowns.

Strawberries last about 3 years before productivity decreases with years 2 and 3 being best. No replace a third each year so I don't have a low yield year when they're all new runners. With regards setting runners, I just push a rooting runner into compost in a 3" pot and cut off when it's established. It's very easy and free

[Nicos]

I had a plastic bag of barerooted strawberries which I forgot about when I moved here.
They were in the garage over Autumn, winter and well into Spring before we spotted them

Once planted out they thrived.
Much tougher than I imagined.

[Matty1985]

I had a plastic bag of barerooted strawberries which I forgot about when I moved here.
They were in the garage over Autumn, winter and well into Spring before we spotted them

Once planted out they thrived.
Much tougher than I imagined.

I wish I knew this information last night, I might have been able to eat my tea before it went stone cold!

Regarding the splitting crown business, Im still none the wiser.. Do I do something to do this or is it a natural thing the plants do?

[Nicos]

Nope....I'm pretty sure they didn't mean the crown!
If so, I've never heard of that!
I think they mean splitting off the runners when they have babies on them??????

[stevejohnson53]

According to link below, strawberry plants can be divided once the plant is mature and has multi crowns.

Strawberry Plant Propagation | Strawberry Plants .orgStrawberry Plants .org

I hope its true as I have just split up 3 alpine strawberry plants, I got 12 new plants and they seem to be growing well.

Steve

[Nicos]

Oh!!...gosh- that's really interesting!

I love this place- new tips and info all the time!