Want more strawberries next year?

On April 1^st this year we planted three types of strawberries in a new strawberry bed. We chose varieties, Mae, Marshmello and Florence to hopefully provide a succession of berries. The plants actually arrived in autumn of last year but were kept in pots in the greenhouse until we were ready to plant them. (See 'Delicious strawberries in June article')

By the 15 April things were looking good as the plants began to flower. In May it was looking even better when huge shiny berries began to form

These were netted against birds who can spot even the tiniest patch of red on a strawberry from miles away. Straw was also placed around the plants to keep the berries off the soil and hopefully give some protection from slugs. If the birds don't get to the ripe berries then the slugs will try and I didn't want to share.

We had some delicious berries with the promise of a good crop until the rains came and consequently ruined many of the berries. We had to gather and compost most of the spoilt berries which was a huge disappointment especially as the berries still had the mouth-watering smell and memory of the true strawberry taste was still fresh in the mouth. Why don’t supermarket strawberries taste like that!

Despite the foul weather, the plants continued to flourish and hopefully will give us a good crop next year – weather permitting. With this thought in mind I decided to tidy up the plants and plant some of the runners to increase the number of plants next year by creating a second bed. 

Some articles suggest that you can just leave the plants to cast out runners to root wherever they like producing what they call mass planting. Tidying up strawberry plants does take a bit of time but I think that it is well worth the effort. In my opinion left to their own devices strawberry plants are like children and just run wild, become unruly and mix with the wrong sort. We made this mistake with a previous strawberry bed where runners just ran and rooted. The plants became clogged up with weeds which were impossible to remove without uprooting the strawberry plants.

It is recommended that the latest that you should do this is the first week in September so the end of August when I decided to add to our stock was just fine. As previously mentioned we have three varieties, Mae, Marshmello (the children on site actually thought we were growing marshmallows!) and Florence, so it was important when removing runners, for potting up, that care was taken to trace which plants the runners originated from.

Each runner was detached from the parent plant and the plantlet (they are actually referred to as daughter plants!) nearest to the parent was planted in a pot to provide a new plant for next year. Several plantlets may form along a runner but only take the first plantlet when propagating new plants as this is the one with most strength and vigour and will provide a better plant than the plantlets further away from the parent.

The selected plantlet was trimmed of any small leaves at the base and planted into a pot of compost. It will probably start to flag a little until it settles down into its new environment and starts to make roots.

Hopefully the newly potted plants will root successfully (as the ones taken a little earlier and shown on the right did) and we will have almost three times as many plants next year. The plants will be overwintered in a cold greenhouse to give them a good start . That is as long as we remember to water them.

Many articles recommend that plantlets are rooted in pots in situ alongside the parent plant and the runners cut free after rooting, however we prefer to propagate as described above. Pegging the runners into pots means that without close attention the pots can dry out. Digging holes in which to sink the pots disturbs the parent plants and they are further disturbed when trying to dig up the pots once the runners have rooted.

Once all the runners were removed from the strawberry bed, I scraped away all the straw used to protect the fruits, weeded between the plants and loosened the soil a little.

Over winter the leaves of the plants may look dead but new growth should start in spring at which point the dead leaves can be removed. Apparently the more leaves that a strawberry plant grows then the more berries it produces. Some articles advocate cutting all the leaves off the plants after fruiting to encourage leaf growth but I am too much of a coward to do this.

It is also recommended that strawberry beds are renewed every two or three years as after that time the plants don’t produce as much fruit. Propagating new plants each year means that you have a succession of plants and hopefully have continuous fruiting avoiding a lean year.

Let's hope that we don't get as much rain when the berries are ripe next season and that they fulfil their promise of delicious fruits! I can taste them now as I write this.

Protect those precious berries!

The Lightweight Aluminium Vegetable and Strawberry Cages use the versatile Build-a-Ball system for connecting uprights and top rods, making it quick and easy to build and extend your design around planting.

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