Spring is in the air! Strawberries in the SFG

Hello fellow SFGers!

The weather here is warm and beautiful. It has me itching to get into the garden. Yesterday I fussed with my bed of strawberries which I recently moved from the dirt to a 4x8 SFG bed. They are looking a little sad at the move and I guess I should have moved them earlier but I am not worried. I am sure they will be much happier then they were in the dirt last year where they survived ant, spittle bug and slug attacks AND an invasion of voles that took all my beautiful berries.

This year I am going to be more proactive. I have them in a raised bed with wire under to prevent voles. I am putting down some organic snail stuff to keep those critters away and I am setting up the ant traps BEFORE 2 million ants move in. As for the spittle bugs, I will just keep an eye on it.

I look forward to a wonderful spring and hope you all have great success with your SFG.

Glad to have you back Shoda!

Welcome Back Shoda. Glad to "see" you again.

Sounds like you have come up with a plan for your strawberry beds. Here's to GREAT strawberries this year!

I am hoping to get a few strawberries but I also remembered that you aren't supposed to eat any the first year. Since mine were transplanted from a nearby bed, do you think it is OK to let them go to fruit? They haven't really taken deep root yet (I accidentally uprooted one while clipping off dead leaves) but they are COVERED in flowers and fruit.

Since I am not wanting them to send out shoots anyway, what do you all think? Pull off the flowers and fruit so they will root deep or take my chances on letting them go to fruit? Or half & half?

What would you do?


OK, the color is off on this picture but you can see the plants are pretty small.

Shoda, you've got some lovely looking strawberry plants there!

I don't believe the problem is eating the berries. What we are told is to not let them flower/pinch off the flowers, so they won't bear fruit, so all their energy will go into the plant growing and strengthening. (sorry, I just re-read your post, and you understand that part.)

I have never been strong enough to do this, which is probably why my yields are low, which is why I buy more plants each year, which is why.......

But maybe this year I will plant a bunch of new plants and only let a few fruit. How much delayed gratification can one person handle, after all???

OK, you have me curious now. So I did some searching and found the following website:

Strawberry Fact Sheet

Since some of the plants are day neutral variety and some are June bearing (and I don't know which are which), I think I will go and remove flowers and fruit for a few months so the plants can get larger. However, sounds like that will also put the plants into "runner" mode so I guess I will have to watch it.

The article says to remove flowers and berries of the "day neutral" varieties until mid to late June. So... guess I will still be buying strawberries this year -- at least for a few months.

I'm going to do strawberries for the first time this year, and I intend to do an ever bearing. The information I read indicates to pinch the flowers for the first 6-8 weeks, and clip the "runners" so that all the energy stays with the mother plant and goes into the fruit production.....so you can eat the harvest, but you have to train and nurture the plants to get the most out of them this year and the next possibly 4 or so years before you rip them out to start a new set of plants. I guess after that first 4-5 years, they slow production because a person usually can't keep up with the daughter plants and they just lose their prolific tendencies. All that I've read so far says that you can eat the fruit the first year, when you finally let it fruit.