I was wondering about your strawberry bed. It seems that you are growing these as a perennial, which is something I am interested in. All the books say to plant strawberry crowns, but I can only find strawberry plants in my area. Also, October is when you plant strawberries in Louisiana, so I was wondering if I buy one of those leggy-looking plants, do I just snip off the offshoots and plant them separately into some sort of bed form, or do I plant the whole plant, legs and all?
I can't speak to Lousiana, but up here in Michigan, early in the spring (like, March--when there is often still snow) many nurseries have the crowns (which are also called sets or baby plants or a few other words I can't think of right now).They usually have them bundled like a dead little mass of blackish looking roots, with a rubberband around them. The first time I bought them I doubted that they would grow...but those first ten plants are the ONLY ones I've ever bought since...and I now have around 150 plants. There's some exponential growth for you!
The thing about the strawberry sets is that they are rarely out on the shelves (I assume it is because they look half dead). You may try asking.
If you can't find them, not to worry. Strawberries are easy to transplant, probably because they are planted so shallow. I usually clip off the runners and plant them separately. Amazingly, those shoots will form roots rather quickly when placed on top of some fertile, loose soil, and watered. This is how I've gotten so many strawberry plants. Usually, the first year your strawberry crop will be disappointing--very tiny strawberries. Most books say to pinch them off to let the plant grow stronger (so that the plant doesn't waste energy on making small fruits), but we let them grow anyway. We were impatient ;).The first year, you should also pinch off runners so that they don't grow, while the plant is maturing.
When planting strawberries, it would be helpful to look online or in a good gardening book to see exactly how deep to plant the strawberry plant. That is the one are where strawberries are fussy.
As your plants grow and start to send off runners, I have found it useful to use peat pots or some extra little containers to catch the runners in. I fill them up with moist soil, and place them under the runners so that they will root in the cup. When they have developed some roots, I snip them, and plant them where I want them to go. Doing this, I have continuously developed a long bed of strawberries. I have also replaced any berry plants that died in this way, and shared strawberry plants with others.
One more thing: everbearing strawberries create fruit throughout the growing season, but Junebearing only produce fruit in June. I am not sure if it is like that everywhere (I assume so as most gardening books refer to these two main classifications), but that is good to know when deciding what kind to get. :-)
2 comments:
Thank you for your quick reply. I think I'm going to buy the strawberry plants at my local nursery and encourage the offshoots for my new bed. Our area doesn't sell crowns at all, and the plants I saw were several months old, but still healthy looking. They are willing to give me a deal to get rid of them, so I may spend around $8 and get 20+ plants once I encourage all the little offshoot plants to grow, then snip them off. The reason we plant strawberries in October in Louisiana is that our winter to spring transition is often over in days, not weeks. We can easily go from freezing temps to 70 degrees during the day in a matter of two weeks or less. Strawberries do much better here if planted in the fall, then mulched heavily and overwintered. We usually harvest June bearing strawberries in late April and early May around here. Thank you again for the info. I haven't found much information in books, so I thought it best to ask someone who had actually tangled with the things.
I figured "junebearing" was relative to whereever you lived. :-) I always wondered if they came around earlier in warmer climates--now I know!
Good luck with them!! There is nothing quite like fresh strawberries in the spring time!
I remember one year, when the first strawberry ripened, we cut it 7 ways and all had a piece of it. Ah, the taste of spring!
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