First outdoor strawberry!!!

morg_monster

Another question re strawberries - how do you know the difference between a runner and a shoot? Thanks!
(just to add - ours are first year plants so am not expecting many runners (couldn't bring myself to cut off the flowers!) but just want to make sure any that do pop out I deal with correctly!)

cootambear

Shoots grow up and have a leaf on top. Runners grow horizontally and have a little `ball` on the end that sprouts roots.

Primrose

Well done! Hope you didn't all fight over your single fruit! My strawberry bed is still a mass of flowers so I have great hopes for a good crop in due course, even though my plants are now 4 years old and supposed to be past their best. Was outside giving them a good soak today in the heat to try and encourage the berries to form.

Orange_King

Hope to have our first strawberries in the next few days, though I would still be really pleased with a crop at the end of the first week of June. Virtually all of the plants have flowered and the runners are already well on their way on some too.

I take it the plants do much better if they are in beds rather than in tubs?

cootambear

Primrose wrote: »

Well done! Hope you didn't all fight over your single fruit! My strawberry bed is still a mass of flowers so I have great hopes for a good crop in due course, even though my plants are now 4 years old and supposed to be past their best. Was outside giving them a good soak today in the heat to try and encourage the berries to form.

Strawbs are at their best in years 2 and 3. The will continue cropping for 6 to 7 years with lower yields. This year try planting the runners and dig up any plants that are crowding the runners. Give them to a neighbour, they wont know

cootambear

Orange_King wrote: »

Hope to have our first strawberries in the next few days, though I would still be really pleased with a crop at the end of the first week of June. Virtually all of the plants have flowered and the runners are already well on their way on some too.

I take it the plants do much better if they are in beds rather than in tubs?

Yes, strawbs will grow in any conditions, but are best in the ground. Its too easy to over/under water in tubs.

SteveV2

cootambear wrote: »

Are you sure this is a single plant, not a matted clump of crowns? The reason I say this is that the expected yield per strawberry plant is about 8-10 oz.per mature plant. You would be expecting well over 2 lbs (Possibly 4) of strawbs from just one plant!

Pass, all I know is I bought a plant and put it in a bigger pot Funnily enough, out of my 3 plant, it looks much worse off than the other 2, green wise.

frogglet

Mine are doing really well this year, I bought one plant two years ago and there are now twenty of them along the conservatory walll in the gravel, there are the most flowers we have had yet, but we also have a slug problem so it is always a race to eat them.

savemoney

My strawberries I got from Suttons are just about to flower

savemoney

My Suttons strawberries I got when posted on here fist flowers I have quiet a few of them flowering now