Garden Tips: Renovate Your Strawberries Annually

Understanding Strawberries
During their first year in the garden, strawberry plants become lush and produce heavily. Spring bearing varieties lapse into a slow summer-dormancy after expending all that energy making fruit. Everbearing varieties do the same. However, everbearing strawberries perk up again after resting for about a month. Everbearers bloom and bear fruit again twice more before frost, although not as heavily as the first round in the spring. The late production from everbearing plants can be sporadic, affected by conditions such as insects, temperature and rainfall.

Watch for runners growing from the main plants. Runners are long stems that grow from the crown of a strawberry plant. A new baby plant will grow at the tip of each runner. Move the tips back into the row where you want new plants to grow, and the baby plants will root. Don't trim the runners off, but allow them to root and grow into new plants. If the runners meander into the garden path or grow past their boundaries, just pick them up and swing them back into line where you want them to grow.

Everbearing strawberry varieties produce very few runners. They use their energy to produce the additional berries.

The mother strawberry plant, the one that bore spring fruit, has pretty much served its purpose. The ability of the mother plant to have a heavy crop in following years is diminished after only one season. This is why the runners are so important.

Why Renovate?

1. Encourage new plants to develop

2. Establish new plants to bear fruit the following spring

3. Thin out the old plants

4. Keep the space productive

5. Control weeds and disease

6. Side-dress fertilizer is easier to apply

How to Renovate

1. The time to renovate your strawberries is after the main harvest, when the plants are in summer-dormancy.

2. OPTIONAL:Trim the foliage back on the mother plants when they hit the summer slump. Trim off the leaves, but don't injure the crown. I like to leave 2 to 3 inches of stem above the crown. If the plants have a fungus disease, removing the extra foliage will help control it. Removing the foliage opens the row, making it easy to weed and easier to find the runner plants.

Trimming the foliage is not necessary, but it is helpful if your mother plants are overgrown. Excess foliage is susceptible to fungus diseases. Removing it after harvest helps promote air circulation to combat fungal infections..

3. Fertilize the plants by side-dressing. I use rich compost. If you opt for commercial organic fertilizer, use an even ratio such as 10-10-10 or 15-15-15.

To side dress, simply apply the compost or fertilizer along the side of the row, and till it in. The nutrients will dissolve and filter down into the root zone.

4. Use a tiller to work in the fertilizer, thin the plants, and control the width of the row. Depending on the condition of the plants, and where they are located within the row, I sometimes till a few inches on each side of the row. I make sure there are plenty of runners where I will not till, and then till away the extra. If the plants seem to be concentrated to one side of the row, I may till away the other side. I find that this can be altered each year to keep the new plants in soil that was not drained of nutrients by a heavy spring berry crop. If the row is 3 feet wide before I thin it, I will reduce it to a width of about 12 to 18 inches.

5. The area that is tilled is automatically weeded, too. Go back now and pull out other weeds that are growing among the strawberries.

6. Water the plants well. The fertilizer must be deeply watered in, and the plants need the moisture after the shock of all this meddling. Water and fresh nutrients help the root development on the baby plants, and it sets them up to endure the upcoming winter.

7. Mulch the strawberry plants well. I use wheat straw when I can get good clean straw that isn't full of errant seed heads. In lieu of wheat straw, shredded leaves or other organic matter will do, as long as it is crispy-dry. Green grass clippings are not suitable, but you can let the grass dry first and then rake it up to use as dry mulch.

Growing strawberries requires physical labor, whether they are in a home garden or in a large field. Commercial strawberry farmers plan on setting entirely new plants every four years or so. With a good renovation program every year, that time frame can be stretched to maybe seven or eight years. That's definitely a money savings by not having to buy new plants as often. Perhaps more important, it translates into a considerable savings of time and work in removing the old plants, preparing a site and setting out the new strawberry plants.

Read more by this author here.

Resources:
Personal Experience

Renovating Strawberries in the Home Garden
http://www.utextension.utk.edu/publications/spfiles/SP284-B.pdf

University of Illinois Extension: Growing Strawberries
http://urbanext.illinois.edu/strawberries/growing.html