Pots of Fruit

Early Strawberries

Well, I've read that you can bring on earlier strawberries by moving them into the green house in early spring.  So this year I thought I'd try it out.  We only have a very small green house but it gets lots of use and make a big difference to anything that is frost tender. In order to get a good idea of how much difference this actually makes I chose to take in a pair of strawberries that were the same age and in the same size pots as two other strawberries that would be left to take their chances outside.

I only thought of doing this in mid March so they won't be as early as they could have been but I can have another go next year.  As far as I know strawberries like to be nice and cold during the winter so don't take them in too early.  I'm not too sure on when is the earliest you can bring them in however.  I'll do more trials next year :)

At the start of April I took some photos to compare the two sets of strawberries.  The photo on the top is of the ones in the greenhouse and you can see a huge difference already.  The strawberries that are outside have no real signs of waking up after the winter yet while the ones in the green house have loads of new leaves.

And yesterday I took some more photos .. You can see that there are loads of flowers on the ones in the greenhouse and non visible on the ones outside. In fact one of the inside strawberries has the beginnings of fruit on it...yay. The outside pair have a couple of sprigs with flower buds developing but it's clear that they are about 3 weeks behind the other ones.  If I had brought the indoor pair in sooner  they you would probably get strawberries at least a month earlier.  By the way this is an unheated greenhouse as the winters here are fairly mild.  Another experiment that I am doing is to see how much difference liquid fertilizer like comfrey and manure make to the number of fruits.  With each pair I am fertilizing one and not the other and I can see that both the fertilized ones are a little ahead of the non fertilized one. I like doing these kinds of experiments so that I can see for myself how effective our methods are.  Also we can learn how to improve on our methods each year.  This year I'm just doing some basic trials but next year I'll get a little bit more detailed.  Basically I'm looking for simple and natural ways of increasing our yield.  I'm not going to look for the absolute maximum possible, just a little more.

 

Strawberries

When we got them we planted our first three strawberries all in one pot - a large fish box - and last year I realised that it wasn't a very good idea.  While the plants grew strongly and did produce strawberries it was very hard to look after them as there was such a massive tangle on leaves.  There was too much cover for slugs and woodlice to hide. The leaves of each plant overlapped each other creting a dense thicket.  These guys obviously aren't the best friends of strawberries and so conditions that are unsuitable for them are to be encouraged.

The plants are in their dormant stage in this photo so there are only about 25% of the leaves that were present during the summer. 

Also, the fact that there were so many leaves all overlapping each other meant that most of the strawberries were trying to ripen in very damp conditions.  As a result of this a good few went mouldy (botritis) before being ready to eat :(  Only the ones that hung over the edge and were able to escape the sprawl were salvaged.

Here is one that was planted in a pot by itself and this fared much better.  We have about 7 of these and overall I think that if you are keeping strawberries in pots then they should be potted up singly.  It was easy to see the growing strawberries and check for any slug damage.  Also it was easier to look under the pots to see where the feckers were hiding as the pot was smaller and lighter.

Originally I had decided to repot the three in the fishbox but then I thought of a better idea.   These three big healthy plants are going to be this year's Mammys.  In order to get really good runners I have read that you should dedicate a plant or two to this purpose alone and prevent them from fruiting.  All the energy then goes into the runners and so next year's plants get a good start. 

Even though I have enough strawberry plants in the garden it is still important to keep propagating new ones.  There are two reasons for this 1) Strawberry plants start to loose their vigour after 3 or 4 years and so they should be replaced with new ones in order to ensure good crops.  Rather than replace all your plants suddenly you should propagate enough every year to replace about a third so that you have a steady supply of mature plants.

As you can see the crown on this guy is quite large and so I think it will do a good job.  But just to make sure I added some manure as a top dressing.  I wouldn't normally add manure to the strawberries this close to summer as it's not too hygenic for the strawberries to be sitting on them.  But as these guys will not be making fruits it should be fine.

The manure will go towards making nice big foliage which should strengthen the plant overall.   

Here is the manure in place.  I put in about two inches of it so we'll see what happens.  When I start to see any little flowers emerging I'll pick them off and just allow about 5 runners to develop per plant.  I'll probably cut off any weak ones and allow the strong ones to mature.

To find out more about runners and how to get them to root and all that have a read of this post

Potting on the Strawberry Runners

Transplanting the strawberry runners has been long overdue and so I went for it today so that they would still get a chance to establish themselves over the winter in preparation for a bumper harvest in summer…I hope.

I got a fairly large pot, about 10 inches across and put in a 1 inch layer of pebbles at the bottom. Strawberries must have good drainage in order to flourish.

Then I put in a load of our own garden soil, complete with worm(in the middle). I am using this in preference to a peat based soil in order to see if it will dry out less easily. This year the strawberry pots were prone to drying out and were then hard to re-wet, so I’m hoping the heavier clay soil will help. Then I popped in the baby strawberry on top of this and filled up the rest of the container with rich garden compost.  I put in about 2 or 3 inches of this as I have read that Strawberries like lots of humus and fertility that is not to highly nitrogenous. I think that this means you shouldn’t use fresh manure and possibly other things that I haven’t identified yet. I still a bit confused about this.

I didn’t fill the container as much as I could. I just barely got up to the same level as the base of the plant, the crown. This is because I want to add some composted manure later in the winter and I don’t want to cover over the crown of the strawberry. If this is under the soil it will rot and then the plant will probably die.

To top off the planting I added a bit of seaweed meal as an all round tonic. I gave the newly potted strawberry a reasonably good water and set in the garden where it will get the best sun. They all look very happy now and I’m also going to compare each plant to see how much difference the size of the pot makes to the amount of fruit obtained. I’ll report on that in about 9 months!

And now a report on this summer’s fruiting. The strange thing about our existing strawberry plants is that they are setting fruit again. I‘m not sure if they have been confused by the weather but three of the plants have nearly fully grown fruit on them. I have a feeling they won’t ripen but I might put one of the smaller containers in the greenhouse and see what happens.

The one thing that I learnt was that if you are putting strawberries in pots then it is better to plant just one per pot. We planted three in a large fish box and in the end it was hard to get into to the middle to maintain them and check on the fruits. Also there were runners appearing from every where and even though I was trying to restrict there numbers they just kept sneaking out because it was so hard to see into the plants. The strawberries planted singly however were very easy to keep an eye on and these also suffered less slug damage. I think it was just too comfy in among the leaves in the triple planted box for the slugs. There were too many hiding places. I also found that taking a pot and placing in a tub of water in order to give it a good soaking also hunted out any sneaky slugs and they could then be picked off as they scrambled, slowly, up the side of the container. The water protection in the form of the raft with its feet in water also helped. Hopefully next year will be a better year. The small number of strawberries were absolutely amazingly tasty and I just can’t wait for a proper bowlful……mmmmm

Strawberry Runners

It's that time of year when the strawberries are doing their best produce off spring.  We have about 8 strawberry plants which are in various stages of maturity.  I am trying to give the younger ones a chance by snipping off their runners before they drain energy from the mother plant and I'm letting some of the older ones send out about 5 runners, again in order not to drain them too much.

Runners are the quickest way for the strawberries to reproduce.  They do produce seeds, on the outside of the strawberry fruit but the runners seem to be the most reliable way to produce more plants.

Here you can see one just starting to grow on the parent plant. The tip of it is in the middle of this photo.

As it grows it gets a lot longer, maybe 2 feet long, and then starts to grow leaves. 

When the runner has actually started to grow roots this is the time to pin it to some soil so it can spread it's roots into it before being detached from the parent plant.  I tried, last year, doing this before the little roots started to appear and the runner just crept its way out of the pot again.  I think that the bit connecting it to the parent plant has to reach it's maximum length before it wants to root itself.  This makes sense as it probably wants to be far enough away from the parent plant to ensure a good supply of nutrients.

When you've decided that now is the right time to root the runner the best thing to do it fill a small pot with soil or compost.  Make sure the soil is well watered and then place the runner on top of the soil.  You do not need to bury it.  I wasn't too concerned about the type of soil I used here as it won't be in this pot for more than a couple of months.

To prevent the strawberry from popping out you can weigh it down with a small stone.  You can also pin it down with a bent stick or something.  Whatever comes to hand.  The runner should remain attached to the parent plant for at least a week until it has it's own root system. Two weeks might be even better.

When you think that the runner is big enough to stand on its own two feet then cut the piece connecting it to the parent.  This is best done during cool or wet weather.  I did this with some of my runners during a spell of very warm weather and every day the new strawberries wilted and then recovered at night time.  They were obviously having a bit of difficulty staying hydrated. 

As the new strawberries grow they will need to be transplanted into larger pots.  When you do this remember not to bury the crown of the plant in the soil.  This is basically the area where all the new shoots come from.  It likes to be at the surface in order to prevent rotting.  This strawberry plant is about 9 months old and still has a bit of growing to do.  Some of its sister plants have fruited this year but not this one for some reason. 

It seems that you really only need to buy a few strawberry plants and then over the next few years the number can be greatly increased with a little patience and tender care. 

We've had some of our first ever strawberries in the last couple of weeks and OH MY GOD!  They are amazing.