Ageing strawberry plants

[Primrose]

I've just picked a late crop from my four year old strawberry plants. I know recommended practice is to replace them after three years. However, as I have literally nowhere else to grow them I've replaced a few with new runners over this week-end and topped the bed up with freshly dug-out compost. I'm wondering if anybody has left their plants in situ indefinitely and still had a reasonable crop from them. The plants still look incredibly healthy and I'm reluctant to pull the remainder up and consign them to the compost heap.

[glallotments]

I'm going to leave mine in until they start to disappoint in fruiting.
After fruiting this year I cut off all the leaves of my plants, fed them and weeded the bed etc and now they are fruiting again.

Like you I take off some good runners to replenish the gaps where plants have disappeared.

Interestingly I didn't put the netting back after weeding and the birds have left the ripened fruits.

I also read somewhere - could have been here that I should leave on the berries that have been nibbled by slugs as then they will go back to the same berry night after night and this seems to have worked too - there again the dryness cut have cut down the slug activity too.

Wonder how this works - do they retrace their traill and if they find 'their' berry OK but if not searc our another one?

[Mike Vogel]

I use the same slug technique on the tomatoes, glallotments, and that also seems to work.