Kitchen Garden Forum

At the end of last year I took the best runners from my three year old strawberry bed and gave them a lovely new well composted bed of their own.
I was just going to dig up the old bed but my OH said, "Aw, give them another year." So I did.
Now the new bed is giving the minimum of small, miserable fruits and I`m filling box after box of big, juicy berries from the old `un.
What did I do?
And what shall I do now?

I'd leave them all for next year. The new plants may then have built up and be producing a good crop. The runners we took last year haven't had much fruit either but are starting to become strong looking plants. As for the old berries while they are fruiting well leave them to - if they struggle next year have them out.

Hi Elderflower,
My thoughts on the subject are that you should invest in new stock and ditch last years runners.
Are any of the fruit misshapened? If so this can be a pollination problem but as your old original stock is fine I doubt that this is the problem.
JB.

Thanks for the advice, which I`ll follow next season.

Quite a few of us are struggling with this years plants not producing much of a crop.

Beryl.

Really?
Sorry to h ear that but glad it`s not just me.

We've had the best strawberries ever in 25 years. No idea why but we're feeding them and potting up runners. Aiming to get rid of old stock and - incidentally - destroying all raspberry canes too - probably in excess of 300 plants - with the intention of starting afresh next year.

We're also going to have some hives of bees next year in the hope we will be able to have a really good pollination process.

My OH reckons he's picked his own body weight in strawberries this year

Ours have done well too

Ours have done well too...even the last years runners have produced some good fruit. In fact, all the soft fruits have gone daft and I've made so many jams, I'm fed up of it now...just the red gooseberries to go! (I'm not even thinking about brambles....) I've used up all my stock of jars so it's off to Asda for their 28p marmalade...it's as bad as the dire stuff I used to buy from Lidle but the jars are excellent and Asda is just down the road!
Cheers.