The great thing in growing strawberries is to look well ahead and to make early preparation for the next year's crop. Some gardeners treat the growing of Strawberry plants as annuals; that is to say, they pull them up after they have produced one crop of berries.
Most Strawberry Gardeners take two crops of fruit before destroying the plants; others leave them for the third season. We have at times cropped the late fruiting variety called La Sans Revival over five years. These Strawberry Plants bare fruit from early December until late January and are very hard to find nowadays.
The plants are set out in buckets and placed high up in a Spanish tunnel late in October and are ready to crop at Christmas time, as you are probably aware fresh produced Strawberries will command a high price at the local market.
Any longer in the cropping of the mid-season crop varieties will reduce the size of the berries, this is not a loss because the fruit is ideal for preserving.
Taking Strawberry Plant Runners, for any gardener new to Strawberry Growing, a Strawberry Runner is a small plantlet that will shoot out of the centre of the mother plant on a long stem. This stem will at times produce up to ten plantlets, these plantlets can be pegged down, or pushed into the soil where they will root and produce another young plant.
(We will go more into collecting runners next month). Runners are your next batch of plants for cropping. The constant succession of good quality Strawberries can only be kept up by preparing a fresh stock of young plants every year, since the Strawberry is at its best under ordinary cultivation in its second year.
However, this is not to say that those who make a fresh plantation only every second year will not have good results. A method that is strongly recommended is this; Plant the Strawberry Plants in September in rows 18 inches apart, putting each plant 9 inches from its neighbour.
There will be a fair crop from each plant the following season, but if all the plants were allowed to remain for another year they would be much to crowed.
The plan therefore, is to dig out every other plant in the row, this will leave the remaining plants 18 inches apart, which is sufficient distance to allow between them. They may then be left for one to two seasons as the grower desires.
The plants should be removed after three seasons, do not try to force a fourth year, as the plants will be diseased and to woody to produce any decent crop, plus the space the plants are taking up is needed for root crop (potato), this crop will open up the soil ready for the following years planting.
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About the Author
Trevor Dalley has been growing Fuchsias and Chrysanthemums for sale to the gardening public commercially for the last 40 years and is now ready to pass on money making knowledge to you the reader for free. http://gardendesignhelp.blogspot.com
