Topic: Strawberries this time of year?

[Dianna]

Patti = 1
Rabbits = 0

Great job, Patti! It looks like it will thwart even the craftiest rabbit!

[Dianna]

Geesh, if they keep shaving more off and more each year, eventually, they will be the size of toothpicks.

  That was funny, Patti!





Well, Reyla ate our first strawberry of the season off the plant while she was here. She really enjoyed it. Too bad the darn birds didn't leave them alone so that she would have had more. And too bad that we didn't have a camera out there while she was eating it!

[MassMama]

  Love all the berries!! Mine are Big this year. (well at least I think so )

*broken link removed*
My Question is... Is it best to let the smaller plants do the running or the older ones?? I wanna make sure I have plenty for jam eventually..

[Patty S]

VERY nice looking plants, Rita! Have you read my Strawberry tutorial? (It's here, in the Vegetable & Fruit forum.) In the Plant Energy – Flowers and Runners section, you will see... 
            Strawberry plants do only two things:
                  1. They make berries.
                  2. They make babies.
(Read on in that section, if you don't have the time to read the whole thing.)

If you let your plants go to runners, you won't get as many berries as you might want for your jam. Later on in the season, go ahead & let them go to runner, so you'll have new plants for next year. For now, pull the runners off those plants that have them.  They might try making berries instead... or they might try another runner again, but stay on it & force them to put blosoms out with all that energy.  (I think that strawberries have their teenagers too, cuz you have to keep letting them know who's boss!)

[MassMama]

Patty I did read your strawberry book it was good but I was not sure if  you should select certain plants to make runners or how it actually worked.. I would like to fill in the whole area with the berries I need to go get that bird netting over them before the birds and critters get them though!!
Thanks for the info!!

[Penny]

   I havent had much luck with strawberries, so this year i thought that i might try one of the hanging baksets.......has anyone tried them and what was the result??

[Patty S]

Penny, I'm sorry... I got so busy gabbing, I forgot to focus on your question about which plants to choose for runners!

A strawberry plant is a strawberry plant, & just like some short, squat people have tall skinny babies & tall people have short babies, there's no way to predict which plants will put out runners with nice plants on them. When the time comes to let them make runners, you'll just have to watch them, & if you like the looks of some of the baby plants better than others, just let them go so they can "dig in" & set down roots.  The ones you don't like, either pull off & let the plant try it again, or leave them & see if they dont surprise you & get bigger.  (There will be plenty to chose from, believe me!)

Last I heard, Lynne was going to try a hanging strawberry basket, cuz she can't keep the critters out of strawberries on the ground.  The baskets can be gorgeous, & you would plant them the same way you would in a tower. 

Sounds like you've really got the gardening bug going!  Have fun!

[Penny]

   Thanks for the reply Patty...i have seen some really nice ones at WM.......i havent tried one and was curious if anyone has, we dont have the room for any in the ground....my flower boxes that Brad built for me last summer are full, so i thought i would try one of these.
I'll let you know how it goes and thanks again for the reply.

[Penny]

   HA.........i knew there was another question.......one of my neighbors told me to fertilize the basket with Miracle Grow.....would you put that on Strawberries Patty or let them do it naturally???

[Penny]

   Great job and good luck......i'm sure they wont get in there now!!

[Patty S]

Personally, I don't see one thing wrong with Miracle Gro®, & I use it on almost all my plants (& even on the lawn!)

The thing that people usually don't think of when it comes to planter boxes & baskets, etc., is that when the excess water drains out, it's dragging soil nutrients with it, so it needs to be replaced somehow.  (There is no "natural" way for a potted plant to get nutrients, cuz in nature there are no containers to limit food sources.)

Although any of the MG products are high in Nitrogen, I use the 18-18-21 "Tomato Plant Food" for everything. 
 

[Penny]

  Never thought of when its watered that it would all drain out.......hmmmmm.....might as well give it a try, cant hurt right?

Thanks again Patty!

[Patty S]

Five strawberry plants runnered down from the planters & rooted themselves into my veggie garden last fall. I had intended to use them to fill in any bare spots there might be in my towers & planters when winter was over, but it turned out that I didn't need them so I just left them there.  They've been pretty happy & I've been letting them put out runners so I could use them to replace all the 3rd year plants in my planters & towers for next year... but they've started getting out of hand & are getting in the way of my cucumbers & beans, so I've been wondering what to do with them.

While chatting with Sarah, I asked her how her strawberries were doing (she has new plants that have pink blossoms on them), & in the course of our conversation, she asked if I'd like to swap some of my white flowering strawberry plants for pink ones.   I didn't think about it at the time, but when I went out to check on my veggies later, it dawned on me that I finally found the perfect place for those maverick strawberry plants....
  AT SARAH'S HOUSE!

I dug them all out without disturbing the roots & put them into a 16" bowl planter.
     
Peggy & I have been looking for an excuse to pay Sarah a visit, so we plan to deliver these on Wednesday!

If she wants to, Sarah can just leave them in the bowl & let them continue to make babies. (Some of these already have roots & are looking for a place to set in.) She should have a fair amount of brand new plants for next year, before the season is done!

[barleychown]

Awesome!

I'm trying to decide where I will be moving my strawberries to this fall...they are currently taking up valuable raised bed space that I would rather have for veggies.

[patches]

Geesh, Sarah, I don't think I have ever seen any strawberries plants that have pink flowers.    What kind of strawberries are they?  I do have an ornamental strawberry plant but it doesn't get any fruit, just the flowers.   

[barleychown]

I'm not sure what they are, other than a type of everbearing strawberry. I picked them up at a local chain drug store 'cause I thought they were cool, and I needed strawberries...only later did I realize they were not ordinary.

[patches]

Here are some pictures of strawberry plants.  Geesh, I've got some healthy, beautiful plants in good soil with no weeds, but also NO flowers and I don't know what's wrong.  Any ideas???



Here's a close up picture at one end of the bed.

[Patty S]

Those look fantastic, Patti! What are you feeding them? Your leaves have a great color, so they don't look like they're lacking any nutrients, but maybe you can try something high in phosphorus (I think it's the middle number on plant foods/fertilizer) to stimulate fruit production.

Sarah's strawberry plants are putting out fruit like gangbusters, & she told me that she uses Alfalfa pellets instead of plant food. (The kind for horses... not rabbits, she said.) I went to the feed store & got a bag yesterday, & it's not all that expensive!   I didn't look to see how heavy it was (I cant lift it), but it was only $8.99! I think that's going to go a long ways around here!

I finally got a close-up of her pink blossoms!

     

They've got to be the sweetest strawberries I've ever tasted!
 

[patches]

Patty, I checked with the University of Illinois Extension Center when I first put them in and they told me to use something that was 10-10-10 for the strawberries, so that's what I've been using. 

I finally got a close-up of her pink blossoms!

 

Oh geesh, if I had pink blossoms like that on mine I could probably live without the strawberries. 

[Patty S]

Patti, I don't mean to come off sounding like a smart aleck here, BUT... apparently the 10-10-10 isn't working very well, is it?!

You asked for ideas, & I still think that higher numbers are in order. I suggest that you try something different pretty soon, cuz the season is fleeting!  Miracle Gro "Plant food for tomatoes" (18-18-21) works fine on Strawberries.

Have you told the UI Extension people about what's (not) happening in your strawberry bed? Maybe you'll talk to a different person next time & get a whole different answer!

[patches]

Patty, I applied the 10-10-10 when I planted them and I was told to fertilize them again after the 2nd harvest.   Well, I haven't even had a first harvest yet,  so I haven't used any other fertilizer or food on them.   

Actually, if you remember, I had some flowers early in the spring that you told me to pinch off for about a month.  I only got to do that for two weeks and then we got the freezing temperatures, and I haven't gotten any since then. 

[Patty S]

I still think that higher numbers are in order!  If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting!

If you don't think that removing the early spring blossoms is the right thing to do, then don't do it next year... but expect a low yield. (Did you think to ask the UI Extension people about that?) I have no idea what a "second" strawberry harvest might be... they flower & fruit continuously, throughout the growing season!

There are plenty of sites that will walk you through raising strawberries.  Maybe you can find something new if you Google. I don't know what else to suggest.

[patches]

Patty, I'm not real big on using plant food on any of my plants, especially on anything I'm going to eat.  I always figure if I have sun, good soil and water I should be okay.  The strawberry bed is compost with some sand added.      

Patty, I believe picking off the flowers is definitely the right thing to do if I want to get a lot of strawberries.  It was the U of I Extension Center people who said the freeze we got in the spring messed up quite a few of the biological clocks of many of our plants this year.  Personally, I know it played havoc with a lot of my flowers because they were really off schedule this year.  Besides, I think I also lost a few  even through I covered them.     

[barleychown]

Patti, I also believe in avoiding chemicals if I can. I have too many animals to use many chemicals.

My strawberries are in a bed much the same as yours...raised bed, built with compost. The difference is I also added a healthy dose of alfalfa pellets. They are slowly broken down by microbes in the healthy soil you have, and the nutrients are made available to the plant as this happens.

[Dianna]

Patti, how are your new beds working out for you? Are the squirrels and such thwarted by your efforts. It sure looks to be. Your plants are beautiful.

Rita, I don't see how I missed your strawberry plants! They look a lot bigger than my little lonesome plant!

Sarah, the pink flowers are so pretty on yours. Like Patty, I have the white blooms. Nice tip about the alfalfa for fertilizing! Thank you for passing it on.

I guess I need to be fertilizing mine, too, Patty. I have pinched off all the flowers when you told me, too, and mine started running a little. I am thinking about potting mine up like the one you took to Sarah. That is so pretty! I would have to buy a couple more plants, though, to put in with my one little plant. It hasn't spread like I was hoping it would.