[surbie100]

Hello all,
I've just got my first allotment and am really lucky to have some raised beds in place from the previous tenant. One of them has a lot of strawberry plants. They are flowering, but the bed they are in looks like it has huge amounts of couch grass and creeping buttercup (thanks for the pics on the weed pages here!).

Will they give up & die on me if I dig them up and transplant so I can get the weeds out, or should I leave them in place?

Any pointers gratefully received!

[Stevens706]

You can buy and plant strawberries at this tome of year, I would clear one of the other beds then if you are carefull replant the strawberries into it, they might look a bit sad for a while but will recover.

[Kleftiwallah]

The larger 'lump' of soil you remove with the plants (as long as it's couch free) the less stress the plants will be under.

Cheers,    Tony.

[bazh]

I'd be inclined to leave the strawberries be and just hand weed as much as you can to give the strawberries some breathing space, then do your moving and weeding in the Autumn.

[angelavdavis]

If the weeds are really bothering you, I personally would try my best to remove the weeds and roots and water the bed well afterwards to resettle the strawbs.  I would then leave well alone.  If the flowers dry out by the move, they are unlikely to produce fruit which would be a shame.

Move them in autumn as bazh says, when they have finished producing and you need to tidy them up anyway.

[fatcat1955]

I would weed as much as you can and then when the runners come on the strawberry plants , pot them up and grow on for next year. Once you have harvested this year's fruit dig the whole bed over and remove all the weed's. Plant the runner's that you have saved and next year should be ok. Strawberries are best replaced every 3 year's anyway.

[catweazle]

strawbs are pretty resilient to being moved, you should be OK

[gavinjconway]

Thank you for all the tips. All the small plants and runners are moved and the bed's weeded. It hasn't done them any harm and there are masses of flowers & beginnings of fruit. Hurrah!

Strawberries live through all sorts of moves etc... they are as tough as ol' boots!!