There's no reason you shouldn't plant up the bed in the Autumn, the stumbling block may be finding a supplier with stock at this time of year.
'Conventional wisdom' suggests you should not crop in your first year to allow the plants to 'build up strength' for the following year. In the absence of any sort of tuber, bulb, rhizome or whatever I fail to see where a strawberry plant stores this energy for the following year. I would love to see any data which backs up that commonly held belief.
To my mind as long as the plants have established themselves then I see no reason not to let them crop in the first year, after all that's what mother nature is telling them to do.
I have lots of one year old plants which I have been cropping this year and also taking runners. The plants are as good as the ones I grew last year (that I didn't crop) were at this time.
I have small plants (Sarian) that I grew from seed this year and are now reasonable sized plants. They are just coming in to flower so I am hoping for a late crop from them although they are less than 6 months old. I may deflower (can I say that) one growbag of four plants to see myself is there is any discernable difference next year.
As for varieties, this year the best have been Christine and Honeoye, although I picked about 8 Honeoye fruits today that had flowered, fruited and ripened in a very shady gap behind the growbag, they had virtually no taste at all whereas fruit from another Honeoye in the same growbag where the fruit had ripened in the sun were as sweet as you'd like.
The few plants I have in a raised bed, I have a wooden frame about a foot high covered in fine chickn wire to keep the birds off. Wire mesh provides a fairly good wind break as it disrupts the flow of the wind. Perhaps something denser like fleece or enviromesh would give even more sheler even if you only put it on the windward side through the worst weather and leave it open to assist insect pollination in the spring. You could also cover them with polythene through the winter which should help them to put on a bit more growth, however remove it when the flowers start to emerge and leave it off until fruiting is finished.
I bought bare rooted plants from T&M this year (Honeoye, Alice and Florence which should give a spread of cropping next year), they arrived practically frozen and looking a bit sorry but they were producing lots of fresh leaves in a very short time and have produced a respectable taster crop this year.
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August 13, 2009, 13:59