Hey every1 :-D , im gonna go straight to my problem, I've been TRYING to take care of a few of my strawberry plants for 4 years now and it seems that I've been making the worst decisions for them, including the wrong fertilizers, too much fertilizers, position adjusting according to sun and according to climate changings etc... and just this morning i came to check up on them and i saw most of the leaves lean downwards and a few of the stems becoming purple in certain spots, and i had given them phosphorus fertilizer a few days ago, and it occurred to me that maybe I've given them a little too much of the fertilizer, so i decided to extract them, mix up the pot's soil a bit and then replant them, nothing else came to my mind at the time, please some1 tell me i did the right thing, or if it wasn't the right thing what should i do?!? :'( or Very sad and a few tips would be lovely. thx p.s: may i add that they've been the SAME bunch of plants for the past 4 years that i been having? not new ones
Hi Capricorn and welcome!! Well first off i have no idea where you live, but all i can do because of that is tell you about my strawberries here. First of all unless your dirt is absolutely dead i have no idea why you are adding all that stuff to them. What is your yield or harvest like. If your getting strawberries then they are doing okay. let them be. I'm an organic farmer, and believe me i have tons of strawberry plants and an endless amount of runners. What do i do to them,,, nothing! Not a thing. They are planted in a sunny location, out in all the wild elements, and never get covered up from the harsh winters here. I live in the Arctic by the way. The only thing that i did do is put a whole lot of newspaper down, then ran a black strawberry netted cloth over that. I let the elements do all the work. I will say that the patch was already exsisting here, but i have extended it a few times so far. When i do fertalize the rest of the crops, i let the rain and water run off roll down to the strawberries. Thats it. Fertalizer consists of cow manure and chicken manure. Thats it. Most of the time if we let our plants do what they were ment to do, they will perform very well on their own, and need very little care from us. Now my advise is this. You took them out and put them into containers. Okay, not go out to a sunny spot, prepare your ground for planting by getting rid of the weeds and grass, lay some compost down, cover with a black cloth, wait a few weeks, then plant, and leave them alone. They will die back in winter but will come up even better the next yr. But then thats me. There are more knowledgable folks on here and with probably better ideas. Thats the beauty of this site, you can pick and choose what works for you from all the different know how here.
thx biita, i live in the capital of Iran, Tehran, and i have absolutely no idea what type of strawberry plant they are, i just thought maybe fertilizing could/would increase the amount of runners or it would make the plants stronger, since i only get the runners around spring and a few in the beginning of summer. plus i have them in a pot and was afraid of them dying if i replanted them in the ground, so i didn't, is that something i should be worried about or can i simply replant them in the ground? but i know that the fact that they've lasted four years is something, but i still wanna know all the secrets to it. by the way, what's the "black cloth" for?? u said "cover the ground for a few weeks", what's that for?
Well let me say that having strawberry plants in containers is quite alright. They will still thrive very well. If you hang them the runners will just grow down instead of out. But its no problem. Strawberries do very well in containers. I have 2 "pyramids" that are full of strawberry plants that were all the runners from the mother plants. So it is basically a huge container. I just have dirt out of the yard and compost in it...thats it. They do great. So container gardening for them is no problem. As far as them dying back, that is natural here. the root will be good and strong and they will come back. All the leaves will turn brown, i pick those off if its not too too frozen out by then, and just stick them in the dirt. I always make sure i have a few worms in my containers, because i like to feed them,,,leaves, left over veggie scraps. They continue to make compost right there in the pot. The runners do appear in the spring and summer. Thats when i cut them off at the mother plant, as long as they have roots starting and just tuck in some dirt. Some will die, but usually the just take off and start to multiply. The runners that get planted right away, i never let make fruit. I pick the flowers off and let the plant develop fully a root system. By the second yr, i let them have their way, and they always produce very well. The black cloth is used for 2 reasons here. I live in the Arctic, and we do have 24 hours of sun in the summer, but its never a very intense heat. It will burn you, but not plants. So the black is to draw heat to the earth and make a nice warm cocoon so to speak for the roots, and also it helps to hold back weeds. Since you already live in a nice warm climate you might go ahead and skip that part and just prepare the earth. But up here we need the black cloth. I really don't think you will have any trouble, but there is another i know here who does grow strawberries and live way south in Europe.....Ohhh Sjoerd,(hope he can hear me from way up here) can you help Capricorn on the warmer climate part and also your way of planting.
Hello Capricorn--As Biita said, our climate is warmer here and we do strawbs a little differently although the basics are pretty much the same. I have never grown strawberries in hangers, I always plant them in the ground. Here's the way I do it: SOIL PREP/PLANTING: It would be ideal if you could do the soil preparation a month or so before you actually put the (new)plants into the ground. This amount of time is required after digging for the various layers of micro-organisms to re-establish themselves. Read about soil here: http://www.volkstuindersvereniginghoorn ... age18.html You should dig at least a spade's depth then add a generous amount of organic material, like compost (well-rotted) and some bone meal. SOIL: One thing that some folks don't realize is that strawberries do better in a combination of compost and earth. They like their roots in soil that is a bit on the acid side. Keep it acid by using pine needles and bark in and on your soil. WATERING: If you make a "raised bed", then it's good to know that raised beds are notorious for easily becoming dryish, so when your new plants begin to flower you need to water the plants thoroughly and regularly (strawbs are after all, a "water" fruit, if you know what I mean) until well after harvesting. Strawberry plants have relatively shallow roots, so frequent watering not only gives you bigger fruits, but keeps your plant alive and not draught-stressed. I use pure tap water or frest rain water for this type of plant. FEEDING: In the winter I put manure in the new and old beds In the spring I add some manure, bone meal, compost and scratch it in well. Strawbs are plants that like to eat, so they need to be fed more than you would think. I give my plants manure "tea" from time to time during the blooming and fruiting period. CARE: In the early Spring, I remove the dead leaves, stems and other debris from the plants. If these dead leaves become wet they can begin to rot and this may spread to your plants. I then hoe around the plants to loosen the soil and let water down to the roots more easily. I place the straw around the plants when they bloom. This is a tedious job that must be done carefully and properly. The reason one uses straw is to let the fruits rest upon it instead of the pure soil--where it could rot and be more accessable to slug attack. It also acts as a mulch holding the moisture in the ground around your plants. PROTECTING: From off the moment that you set them in the ground, you need to start planning how you are going to contruct a netting frame. A net is essential in almost any outside area, because the birds will eat themselves sick on your harvest if left unprotected. There are a number of ways to make frames. You can build a sturdy square-ish frame of poles or 2x2's for instance, or use that skinny, plastic electrical tubing to make rounded "arches" over your beds to drape the nets across. It is very flexable. I have used both, and had success; but it is also very important to realize that you must secure the netting to the ground so that animals can't creep under it. For this you can use beavy beams , bricks or tent pegs. I use stiff wire bent into an inverted "U" shape, and press this through the holes at the edge of the net. PROPAGATION: The plants that you will soon plant you will not keep forever. I keep my plants only two years, although some of my fellow allotmenteers keep them for three. My beds always consist of 1-2 year old plants and new first-year plants. I pull up the old plants and destroy them. What needs to be done is this: at the end of the summer in say, mid-August to early September you will notice that your plants have sent out runners which will have little plantlets along them. These are going to be your new plants...to be planted in a new bed. You clip the whole runner off back at the "mother" plant, then select the plantlet with the largest root clump and plant it in the new bed. Some folks have a look during the summer and leave the runner attatched to the mother plant and set a selected little plantlet in a small plastic pot sunk into the ground. This way they won't be pulled-up inadvertantly whilst weeding. This process is ongoing year after year, moving from one place in your garden to another. BTW--it is my experience that the longer you keep a strawberry plant the smaller and less numerous the fruit yields are. I can't say that I know anyone here that keeps plants longer than three years. ONE FINAL TIP: Take some extra plantlets from the runners and plant them in a balcony flower box, for instance. Keep this in the strawb bed over the winter, or in a protected cool and light place. The plants may need water from time to time. This is your reserve stock to replace some of the plantlets that won't make it through the winter. Biita mentuioned that she removes the flowers from the first-year plants so that the harvest the following year is better. She is 100% correct in this...of that there is no doubt, but I am greedy when it comes to strawberries and I do not do this even though I know I should. I just love them too much to miss a season. I hope these ideas are helpful to you.
how about an old fashioned Scarecrow instead of a net?? thx a lot Sj and Biita, i'll be looking into preparing locations on the ground for them, the bed type that u mentioned, i've seen how they are, thx, but can't u figure out anything about the color change i mentioned? some certain parts of the stems turned a little purple just after i added phosphorus ferti.(mineral ferti. i guess :?: ), but then again it could be because of the climate change due to the new season
Hello Cap... heh heh heh I guess you might be able to use a scarecrow there, but here the hoards of Jackdaws and blackbirds just laugh at the scarecrows as they gorge themselves, never missing a bite. I have noticed that with the advent of cooler weather some of the older leaves and their stems do indeed turn a reddish-purply colour then go brown and crispy in the end. Here, I believe that it is the cooling air that initiates the conversion of sugars in weaker and older leaves, making them change their colour. It is impossible for me to ascertain if that is what's happening to your plants. Is it possible for you to show some macro pictures of the affected plants? Good luck with your new undertaking.
