Strawbery from seed?

Daisymaisy

yumyums wrote: »

Ooh that's great news! From my first sowing I had a couple germinate around 2 weeks after I'd taken them out of the heated propagator so you should get more hopefully.

My second sowing's doing OK... they've not been eaten by anything yet, which is good!
They actually germinated better than my first sowing so I now have around 20 seedlings but they are a bit close together so I might need to thin them or something (clueless)
I ordered some proper strawberry plants too incase these go completely wrong

I'm up to 13 seedlings now so hopefully there will be some alpine strawberries after all this summer!

yumyums

cootambear wrote: »

Any road up, one of my strawbs has unveiled its first flower today. It gladdens my heart..

Wow, lucky you! Does that mean you'll have fruit soon?

yumyums

Daisymaisy wrote: »

I'm up to 13 seedlings now so hopefully there will be some alpine strawberries after all this summer!

How are they doing?

When I was having problems with the fungus gnats I banished my seedlings to a table outside. They've been there for a week or two now (even overnight with the low temperatures) and surprisingly haven't died yet! In fact, one of them seems to be doing quite well and has even grown its second leaf

cootambear

yumyums wrote: »

Wow, lucky you! Does that mean you'll have fruit soon?

Yes, its on one of my mara des bois, too. They can crop very early, and produce fruit right up to the frosts. Ive gone out and given all my plants some fruit feed in gratitude.

yumyums

cootambear wrote: »

Yes, its on one of my mara des bois, too. They can crop very early, and produce fruit right up to the frosts. Ive gone out and given all my plants some fruit feed in gratitude.

My mara des bois aren't really doing anything yet but I only planted them last week. Are yours new or have you had them for a while?
I guess you're going to let yours fruit for the whole season - the paperwork that came with them said some people like to pinch out the early flowers to get them to fruit more heavily later in the season.

Orange_King

cootambear wrote: »

Any road up, one of my strawbs has unveiled its first flower today. It gladdens my heart..

Excellent!! :T

Hoping for a good crop this year myself. Will I get anything from last years runners or will it take a while? I really must get a system going to ensure I know how old each row of plants is - 4 or 5 years is the upper limit for good produce I believe?

cootambear

yumyums wrote: »

My mara des bois aren't really doing anything yet but I only planted them last week. Are yours new or have you had them for a while?
I guess you're going to let yours fruit for the whole season - the paperwork that came with them said some people like to pinch out the early flowers to get them to fruit more heavily later in the season.

last years planting.

the advice is, if you can bear to do it, is to pinch off the first flowers to allow the plant to put its resources in to roots, stem system, etc. you will still have a crop later in the year.

cootambear

Orange_King wrote: »

Excellent!! :T

Hoping for a good crop this year myself. Will I get anything from last years runners or will it take a while? I really must get a system going to ensure I know how old each row of plants is - 4 or 5 years is the upper limit for good produce I believe?

you will get a small crop from the runners.

commercial growers cull their plants after 3 years (in some cases in the USA 1!).

For a home gardener the plants are not so stressed, so they can fruitfully last up to five years. After that, the advice is to cull the whole patch and plant with something not from the same family eg no tomatoes (stops disease build up).

By then of course you should have established another strawberry bed on a different patch of land, which could be made from planted runners off the old bed.

CommitedToChange

woo hoo, my seedlings have finally made and appearance - I admit that I got worried and made a make shift heated propergator (sp) using a plastic box and a hot waterbottle - many thanks to the MSE'er who suggested it

Mind you I only have one seedling for each type of strawberry so far - here's hoping more appear!

cootambear

I have two from two boxes. Never again, I will just buy plants and plant off runners, this seed malarky is more trouble than its worth.