Strawberries
Thanks to a dry day, I was able to weed the strawberry patch. Lots of the plants are woody and have more than one plant attached. I mean part of the whole plant. Should I remove all extra plants and restrict the 'mother plant' to only one?
Should I put any potash etc around the plants. I have created another row from runners.
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If the plants are more than 3 years old I would suggest either buying new plants or using the runners from the current ones to create new plants.
Strawberry Plants tend to become more prone to disease and produce less fruit after 3 years.
Every three years I compost the mother plant and replace with the runners - those plants you refer to as " more than one plant attached." Last years runners were potted up last autumn and stuck into the ground still in their pots. These are now ready to be planted into their new bed. The mother plant is now a year old. Plenty of life in her yet.
Once the plants become woody, the production in fruit reduces or become mis-shapen.
I sorted out my strawberry bed the other as well Brockley, I use weed matting and cut holes for the plants to come through, the feed and rain can get in but weeds don't come up, it keeps the fruit clean, and you can , if you are that way inclined, put a few slug pellets just under the matting so the wildlife doesn't get at them. At the moment, I have them covered with a plastic sheet type cloche, in the spring, (or whenever its warmer, I change that for a netting cloche, insect can get in for pollinating but birds cant pick the fruit.
I've put my strawberry plants in hanging basket's this year just to see how they fare, the birds got mine last year but I was growing them in strawberry bags
the bright orange one but I think because of all the rain last year the birds went for easy option's and ate my strawb's, they did very well in the bags and easy to set off new plants so depending on how they go in the baskets I might just go back to the bags.