Strawberries in pots
Moderators: KG Steve, Chantal, Tigger, peter
-
Geoff
- KG Regular
- Posts: 5784
- Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2005 5:33 pm
- Location: Forest of Bowland
- Been thanked: 319 times
Having finally received my new Strawberries 'Malling Centenary' and having some potted up runners of my own 'Symphony' I want to work out how I am going to grow them. I have planted half the 'Centenary' in a bed in the fruit cage with the bulk of this year's 'Symphony'. The idea is to grow 6 of each in containers of some sort in the greenhouse or polytunnel to get an early crop. So far I have potted them into 1½ litre (6" diameter fairly squat) pots in the greenhouse in a home made soil based compost mixed with horse manure, leafmould and sharp sand and fed with FBB, phosphate and potash. My runners had been rooted in 9cm (3½") square pots and were already a solid root ball. I have been trying to decide if the pots I have used are big enough and, if not, what to use as final pots. The multi pots you see advertised for the job don't seem to hold much compost but at the other extreme when they suggest growing on tables they seem to put 10 plants in a 40 to 45 litre grow bag. I feel a 4 litre individual pot would seem pretty big. Anybody any ideas?
-
Motherwoman
- KG Regular
- Posts: 1000
- Joined: Sun Sep 06, 2009 6:03 am
- Location: Isle of Wight
Hi Geoff,
As these are only going to be in pots for their first harvest I would say taking them up to about an 8" pot should do the job. Move them out of the greenhouse for the winter as strawberries need a period of cold weather to initialise fruit production (vernalisation), move them back inside in spring. Commercial growers actually remove the covers from polytunnels every year to allow this to happen.
After one year of being forced plant them out in beds or sure as eggs is eggs they'll be destroyed by vine weevil.
MW
As these are only going to be in pots for their first harvest I would say taking them up to about an 8" pot should do the job. Move them out of the greenhouse for the winter as strawberries need a period of cold weather to initialise fruit production (vernalisation), move them back inside in spring. Commercial growers actually remove the covers from polytunnels every year to allow this to happen.
After one year of being forced plant them out in beds or sure as eggs is eggs they'll be destroyed by vine weevil.
MW
-
Primrose
- KG Regular
- Posts: 8096
- Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:50 pm
- Location: Bucks.
- Has thanked: 47 times
- Been thanked: 324 times
Bearing in mind that strawberry plants are supposed to last for about three years before they reach the end of their productive life, I'd be inclined to plant them in as large pots as possible, but even then I'd be temped to change part of the compost every year or add some fertiliser or nutrients to keep them producing productively.
Hello Geoff,
We've grown all our strawberries ( I think they are Cambridge favourites) in containers for the last eight years. They're on trestle tables all around the patio and we have 70-ish of them.
Most of them are in those black flower buckets which supermarkets sell off for about £1 for 8 or 10. We use general purpose compost only and feed them with Tomorite when they start flowering. We have two plants per bucket, finding three plants didn't produce as many fruits and we had problems with botrytis as they were too close together. The compost is refreshed each spring, by removing the top 3 inches or so and replacing with new compost.
We have excellent crops every year.
We tried some plants in smaller pots, like the size you describe,this year, 2 per pot.. but found the compost dried out really quickly.....but it has been a very hot summer. We're sticking with the deeper buckets now.
As Motherwoman says, there is the problem with Vine Weevil grubs and we treat all the buckets with Nemasys nemotode stuff every spring, or the blighters destroy the roots of the plants.
We propagate all our plants from the runners and never had any problems with Vine weevil grubs until we bought in some new plants from a nursery...the next season we had a lot of plants dying and discovered the grubs round the roots. Might be a coincidence but I was convinced they had been in the plants we bought in, as we had never had them before, in either strawberry buckets or containers with the ornamentals in them.
I've never tried them in the greenhouse, or in growbags, so I can't comment on the success rate.
Hope this helps.
We've grown all our strawberries ( I think they are Cambridge favourites) in containers for the last eight years. They're on trestle tables all around the patio and we have 70-ish of them.
Most of them are in those black flower buckets which supermarkets sell off for about £1 for 8 or 10. We use general purpose compost only and feed them with Tomorite when they start flowering. We have two plants per bucket, finding three plants didn't produce as many fruits and we had problems with botrytis as they were too close together. The compost is refreshed each spring, by removing the top 3 inches or so and replacing with new compost.
We have excellent crops every year.
We tried some plants in smaller pots, like the size you describe,this year, 2 per pot.. but found the compost dried out really quickly.....but it has been a very hot summer. We're sticking with the deeper buckets now.
As Motherwoman says, there is the problem with Vine Weevil grubs and we treat all the buckets with Nemasys nemotode stuff every spring, or the blighters destroy the roots of the plants.
We propagate all our plants from the runners and never had any problems with Vine weevil grubs until we bought in some new plants from a nursery...the next season we had a lot of plants dying and discovered the grubs round the roots. Might be a coincidence but I was convinced they had been in the plants we bought in, as we had never had them before, in either strawberry buckets or containers with the ornamentals in them.
I've never tried them in the greenhouse, or in growbags, so I can't comment on the success rate.
Hope this helps.
Happy with my lot
that we also add a handful of chicken manure pellets when we refresh the compost in the buckets.-
Geoff
- KG Regular
- Posts: 5784
- Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2005 5:33 pm
- Location: Forest of Bowland
- Been thanked: 319 times
Thanks for all your comments.
I grow my Strawberries conventionally in a fruit cage. I have 4 beds; 1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year and a break crop - I know a one year break isn't supposed to be enough but it seems to work. I have only grown 'Symphony' for quite a few years always from my own runners, they produce a lot of runners. This year with the contracted Spring we had a problem with the three ages of plants all producing at the same time so I decided to try the new 'Malling Centenary', the plants of which have only just arrived. I also decided to try and force some in the polytunnel to extent the season. As producing plants from runners is so easy I was going to throw away the forced plants after cropping. Having split the 'Centenary' between inside and outside I thought if we liked them and the timing was different I would throw away 6 of the outside 1st year 'Symphony' and replace them with the forced 'Centenary' and hopefully get enough runners that next year's new row would be half and half, my rows are about 30 plants, with some spares to force again.
So the idea is to only grow them in pots for one season. The 1½ litre pots they are in at the moment are about 6", I have some pots labelled 3 litre that are about 7", I'm guessing the 8" pots MW suggests will be about the 4 litre 1/10th of a growbag that I have read about. I'm thinking I might risk 3 litres for just the one season of growing (to be scientific I might try one of each in 8" as well!).
I knew they needed cold to initiate flower buds but I don't know how much and when. I start the heated greenhouse at the end of February / beginning of March and my idea was to put them in there until I ran out of space then move them to the polytunnel. So current plan has become grow them on for a bit in the 1½ litres, pot them up into 3 litres, keep them in the greenhouse for the rest of the year, put them outside for January and February, heated greenhouse for March then polytunnel.
I grow my Strawberries conventionally in a fruit cage. I have 4 beds; 1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year and a break crop - I know a one year break isn't supposed to be enough but it seems to work. I have only grown 'Symphony' for quite a few years always from my own runners, they produce a lot of runners. This year with the contracted Spring we had a problem with the three ages of plants all producing at the same time so I decided to try the new 'Malling Centenary', the plants of which have only just arrived. I also decided to try and force some in the polytunnel to extent the season. As producing plants from runners is so easy I was going to throw away the forced plants after cropping. Having split the 'Centenary' between inside and outside I thought if we liked them and the timing was different I would throw away 6 of the outside 1st year 'Symphony' and replace them with the forced 'Centenary' and hopefully get enough runners that next year's new row would be half and half, my rows are about 30 plants, with some spares to force again.
So the idea is to only grow them in pots for one season. The 1½ litre pots they are in at the moment are about 6", I have some pots labelled 3 litre that are about 7", I'm guessing the 8" pots MW suggests will be about the 4 litre 1/10th of a growbag that I have read about. I'm thinking I might risk 3 litres for just the one season of growing (to be scientific I might try one of each in 8" as well!).
I knew they needed cold to initiate flower buds but I don't know how much and when. I start the heated greenhouse at the end of February / beginning of March and my idea was to put them in there until I ran out of space then move them to the polytunnel. So current plan has become grow them on for a bit in the 1½ litres, pot them up into 3 litres, keep them in the greenhouse for the rest of the year, put them outside for January and February, heated greenhouse for March then polytunnel.