Kitchen Garden Forum

Having had back problems throughout the summer and now a frozen shoulder, I have become seriously behind in tidying up my allotment after the main growing season has finished.

I am just getting to grips with my two raised strawberry beds, which have become infested with runners, many of which I am now pulling out.

However, one thing I have never been sure about is what to do with all the green growth on the mature plants. Am I really supposed to cut all this away, leaving just the crown in situ? It seems a bit drastic, but that seems to be the RHS advice.

Should I now take my secateurs and cut away ALL signs of leaves? Is it OK to do this in November?

I can't remember, but does the crown produce entirely new greenery for the new season in 2018? Is that why all existing greenery is redundant?

Hi Barry!

Up until last weeks frost I was still getting fruit, so I have lots of green growth still. I've cut off the runners and cut off & cleared all the dead leaves from the previous croppings. I generally wait until the leaves go brown and then cut them off which just leaves the crown anyway, but whether this is correct I don't know in this weird season, but under normal conditions it does work and I get good crops.

I only remove dead stuff from anything when there's a risk of frost, just so it can't get into the wound.

There has been a similar post recently that might be worth reading. viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14137&hilit=strawberry

I usually do it a bit earlier than this and leave a few central leaves if they look healthy, they are tidied up again in the Spring when the new foliage gets going. The important thing is to refresh your stock with new runners, if you haven't got space now while you are clearing you could pot up some of the better ones and re-plant them later.

Don't forget to move the entire bed to a new area every 4 or 5 years too. I bin the old plants and either add planted up runners from previous year or add new plants, I shall be moving mine next year.

Oh for enough growing space to relocate them every few years! Mine have been in situ for about 15 year since I have no other suitable growing space foe them. I’ve replaced most of them a couple of times, try to replace older plants with fresh runners and put a fresh compost dressing on every year but they have to survive as best they can. Surprisingly I still get a reasonable crop from then and cut all the dead bits off every winter.

I really thought the couple of frosts we had would have mine looking a bit tatty and ready to tidy for the last time. But no, still green and several even in flower. They are pretty protected in their corner with the compost bin in front of them and the neighbours plastic tunnels down the side.

I think I may have to shorten my re-planting regime as these poor guys must have been cropping almost non-stop, so must have weakened them substantially. This is their 3rd year but I will leave them alone as I am not prepared to replace them as cut all the runners off.