This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
Advice about strawberries
Lou24
Posts: 10
I have a crop of strawberry plants in troughs, mounted on pallets on the wall. Can anyone advise how to over winter them so yhey don't just die off ? Ive removed browning foliage and I'm rooting suckers but should I cut them back and if so when should I do it. 😊
0
Posts
I leave the old foliage over winter to offer some frost protection and in early Spring I remove all the dead foliage and the the new foliage soon appears.
Give them a Spring feed - I use Vitax Q4, but there are plenty of alternatives and that's all that needs to be done.
After about 3 years, it's best to replace the old plants with rooted suckers.
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Just keep them ticking along by watering until next year if they are summer bearers. At some point around autumn time you will not even need to do that at all until spring.
However, for anything grown in containers, watch out for signs of the evil weevils (vine weevil grubs, to be specific).
If you water the strawberry plants regularly then you will have a fair idea of the time it takes for the wet compost to dry out. If one day the compost is wet when it should be dry and some of the plants look sickly then chances are that you have a vine weevil grub infestation.
I mostly grew them in containers, because of slugs, but even tiny plants/runners in 3 inch pots cope with all winter weather we get here. I used to stick them in among other planting/shrubs for a bit of protection from the worst of the frost/ice/snow, and to stop them drying out too much when it was warmer and drier.
Even when they look dead, they come back to life very readily though, as @Pete.8 says, and it's about keeping them productive, hence the 3 year cycle.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...