Strawberry beds

Ilikeplants

If you plant your strawberries together in a bed, what do you do with it after strawberry season is over? It seems a waste of space, do you cut it all back to ground and use it so plant lettuce or something? Do you dig up the strawberries and squash it to one side?

pinut

You could dig them out, however, transplanting mature plants in the heat of summer will be less successful than in the cool of spring. You can migate against this by cutting off all runners and some leaves to prevent moisture loss from transpiration. Better yet, transplant the offspring plants at the end of the runners - just separate them as soon as they produce the nubs of a few rudimentary roots, they don't have to be fully rooted.

As for myself, I would never plant strawberries in a bed directly in the ground because they spread like weeds making maintenance of them extremely difficult.

Instead, I plant them in pots, in long narrow window boxes and in the v-channel of two long wooden boards nailed together, all elevated above the ground to make it easier for harvesting and for dealing with the runners (I just cut off any unneeded ones).

After the fruiting season is finished, I can afford to be more lax - watering enough just to keep them ticking along. The dead and dying leaves are left unattended over winter until the following spring.

nick615

Surely, replacing one crop after another in the same ground will exhaust it?