[jevennett]

My strawberry bed has been totally neglected and is just a mass of runners so can't tell which are original plants. I can't imagine they will crop as they are as too congested. How do I| go about deciding which plants to remove to thin them out?

[noshed]

You'll be surprised how well they survive on neglect but there's still time to thin them out a bit. Just take some secateurs and trim out a few here and there to give the rest some room. If there are some nice looking runners, either put them in another bed or pot them up and give them to people.
My bed is full of strawberries, weeds and grass at the moment so I'll be doing a spring clean at the weekend.
You could dig the whole lot up of course and start again with the best looking runners, preferably in another bed.
Whatever you do, bung a bit of FBB or similar to give them a good spring start.

[jevennett]

Thanks for the advice, will have a go tomorrow. What is FBB? sorry bit new to this

[prakash_mib]

FBB - Fish blood and bone
Last year I bought a strawberry plant (just one for my whole allotment  ) and I carefully ran one runner.
This year I have two of them. will the second one fruit? its just a gimmik?

[Poolfield2]

I'm a control freak so I dig up my strawberries every year and include them in the veg rotation into newly fed soil, I have a neighbour with a horse so plenty of organic matter. I plant then in a nice neat grid system and in theory take off all the runners, so how come I've just offered over 50 runners on freecycle

Funnily enough it was my job for this morning to sort out the strawberry bed so I am feeling smug and the bed is sooooo neat

[Trillium]

Strawberry plants will make a bit of fruit their first year but the main crop comes in the 2nd year. There's some in the 3rd year but not as much and it steadily goes downhill from there as the plant's maximum life is 5 years. So whatever runners you have, you might want to plant into another bed elsewhere, one that's well prepped and free of weeds (my eternal headache here) so you'll keep cropping well. By the time that's ready for full cropping, the first bed will need serious digging out, manuring and replanting.