Strawberry Plants-Garden Delicious Treasure. Care After The Harvest Is Over

The sweet taste of strawberries makes growing strawberry plants very alluring. Eaten fresh off the plant or turned into baked goods and jams, the strawberry fruit has so many uses.

The strawberry harvest may be over, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to forget the strawberry plants. Strawberry plants should be renewed every three years or so, as there production rate slows down.

Strawberries are poor competitors, not only against invading weeds, but neighboring strawberry plants as well.Once fruiting has finished give your strawberry plants a haircut! Post-harvest care is an important part of keeping your patch healthy and productive.

The strawberry plant begins forming the buds that will turn into next year’s flowers within the crown after the harvest has completed.  These buds begin forming in late summer and continue forming until early fall.

For strawberries, it is very important to renew the strawberry bed after harvest. This includes cutting all the leaves, narrowing the rows, adding a fertilizer, preferably a 5-10-10, thinning the plants and leaving only the strongest ones, allowing only the strongest two runners from each plant.

Old leaves are of little use to the plants, and may be diseased. Trim off the leaves with a pair of shears, aiming to leave just a few leaves around the crown. Remove old foliage, unwanted runners and spent flower stalks from plants, allowing light and air into the centre of the plant.

New foliage will develop within a few weeks. Remove the straw mulch (if used) and weeds and clear away all debris from the crown. Put old leaves and straw on the compost heap.

Within the row, thin plants to one every 6 to 8 inches, removing the older plants and leaving the younger, more vigorous ones. Giving the  strawberry plants a little room to grow reduces the competition for water, light, and nutrients and also improves air circulation.

As a strawberry row becomes dense with new daughter plants or the row width increases to more than 24 inches, fruit quantity and quality begin to suffer.When preparing to narrow the row, choose one side of the row to keep, rather than the center. The following year, choose the opposite side, then alternate back and forth in succeeding years.

This method requires a small amount of extra space on each side of the strawberry row, but provides an annual supply of newer, more productive plants.Peg down runners into small pots of compost, buried in the soil between rows. By autumn these will have roots and can be severed from the parent and planted into their new site with minimal disturbance.

Strawberry plants have a short life expectancy as a perennial.  They fruit best in their second and third year. If your strawberries are in their third year of cropping, consider establishing a new bed. After three years of cropping, yield declines and plants are more likely to be infected with virus.

What I do is replace one third of my patch every year.I dig up and remove any plants that are looking old. They have multiple crowns, and the crowns have grown higher out of the ground, and they are all matted together. Just leave the ones that look like new, single plants.

Fertilize and water the remaining plants. Continue to water with one watering season each week. To ensure maximal production of strawberries in the following year, 1 inch of water must be applied to the strawberry plants per week until the first frost.)

Want  to know more about strawberry plants?

Then, click here:Strawberry Success Solution | Your Organic Gardening Blog or Your Strawberry Plants | Your Organic Gardening Blog

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Yours truly, Polly – Organic Gardener

Tagged as: cropping, foliage, strawberry plants