Strawberries - this year. Can I pick fruit?

[Jennysheepdog]

New to this

I have sent off for some free strawberry plants with a magazine

Can I pick the fruit this year or do I have wait a year?

Can I plant then in low hanging baskets to keep them away from slugs?

I don't mind watering each day?

Thanking you in anticipation

[Bigmallly]

Gerrum eaten girl & yes hanging baskets will be fine.

[Alison]

As BM says, enjoy the fruits but you'll also need to feed as well as water otherwise they'll soon use up the nutrients in the small volume of the basket.

[Kristen]

Usually Strawberry plants offered for sale around this time, and later, have been cold stored - the effect is that when planted they hurry to flower, and fruit, so they should do that in their first season. You'll probably get a larger crop in following years though.

[Florence Fennel]

That's the beauty of strawberry plants, you get a quick, delicious harvest

[ancee]

Warm, just picked strawberries - surely sent straight from heaven!

[Nannysally99]

Warm, just picked strawberries - surely sent straight from heaven!

So right Ancee, it's the only way to eat them. Cold fruit is just a no no in my house lol

[BertieFox]

I've NEVER followed these instructions from the ascetics who tell you to pull off all the flowers and forgo fruit for the first, or even second years! I've never found it makes ANY difference, and in nature a plant will do what it feels like and produce fruit when it feels like. Sometimes it does this as it feels so poorly that it has to do something desperate before it shifts off its mortal coil, but usually it does it because it is ready.

The main thing is to look after your strawberry plants AFTER fruiting, if you want to enjoy harvests year after year. That means cutting off or rooting runners for new plants, removing all the old foliage so the plants will grow new fresh growth at the end of the season, and feeding them and keeping them from drying out.

More strawberry plants are lost after the first harvest than ever survive for another year. But a little care will ensure a far better harvest in their second and third year.