[Snap Dragon]

Been reading up on strawbs in my lottie book tonight and it says...

Strawberry plants need to be moved every 3 years so the general practice is to propagate a third every year. Buy new stock every 9 or 10 years.

I'm probably having a blond moment but this statement confuses me! Is this a kind of crop rotation thing? And can you only propagate from runners for 9/10 years?  :?

Anyone care to explain in simple English for me?  :oops:

[Trillium]

Strawberries are the oddity in the plant world. You put in new plants, and if in early enough, you should get a crop that year. To propogate itself, the plant throws out 'runners', young plants by means of a sort of surface branch (runner) which will root the baby plant on its end. Mom plant, meanwhile, has exhausted herself somewhat and needs a good haircut and feeding after finishing fruiting. The idea of the runners are simply to find fresh new feeding ground, which will always be away from the mother plant. The mom plant, with regular haircuts (cutting off all old leaves) and feeding will remain viable for a few more years but will gradually degenerate to a point where it's just wasting space. The new runner plants will take over but eventually reach the same worn out stage.
In essence, the initial plant you bought won't live particularly long. Some people don't allow the runners to form, thinking it starves the mother plant, but it's not what nature intended. If you follow this method, you'll need to totally replace your plants every few years to keep up production.

I've had many runners and some mom plants for quite some time now, but I do trim the moms after fruiting and feed them all.  Call me cheap, but I do get respectable yields from my runners when they mature the following year.

[gobs]

'Is this a kind of crop rotation thing?'

Oh, yes, it is.

A strawberry plant will be productive for about 4 years, so plants need to be renewed and planted up somewhere else to reduce build up of disease.

So if you are serious about your strawberries, will have 3 beds on the go of different ages. These will be easily produced from runners.

Your book advises you, to buy new, virus free stock even then, after 10 years. I don't think many bother, unless their plants are bad or fancy a new variety.

Also see in Wizzy.