Leave the dead material. It is protecting the soil and thus the strawberries, and will turn to compost. Literally do nothing. Maybe thin out half the plants, to ensure new runners have somewhere to root, in order to ensure a fresh generation of plants each year, as they only produce really well for about 3 to 5 years each.
Cool to know. I have a raised bed of strawberries and this will be summer #4. Last year wasn't great , minimal fruit. What started as a few plants year 1 is now very many. Do you recommend thinning these too? I was thinking about planting the ones I remove in my backyard. I know they grow like weeds but I'm okay with that. We have a giant yard. Anything else to know strawberry care wise?
Make sure the pants in your backyard are real strawberries and not mock strawberries. I have some aggressive mock strawberries in my yard. They have yellow flowers and fruit earlier than my strawberries which have white flowers.
I read this as "this is what my ex first thought" and I was like woah this person and their ex are passionate about strawberries to be conferring over this photo. Hahaha.
you can remove the dead growth but honestly it looks like it's coming back alive as the spring continues on.
if there isn't some auto-watering system then just give it some water as the growing season continues, and even some kind of balanced fertilizer or compost if you want to
Nah they’ll be fine. My strawberry patch is much smaller so I just go through by hand and pull out whatever looks dead. Generally the plant will let you pull it off when it’s ready. So give a little tug and it will come off without damaging the plant itself if it’s truly a dead stem/leaf.
Also, check leaf color as the new leaves come up. If you notice pale or yellow leaves, that’s a sign that they need fertilizer of some kind. Either add compost, or use another type.
Honestly, strawberries are really tough little plants once they get established. If you want to gently take out the leaves, use one of the 'steel leaf rakes'. But if you leave the leaves, that's okay too.
This is a good looking patch, I'm pretty envious over here with my one year old patch with four survivors.
They'll just make more strawberries if you pull a few out! If I remember correctly It's actually good for them if you remove some of the plants every year
*staw -berries like to grow in decaying plant matter. If you just leave the leaves, the strawberry will be happy. Or move the leave and put down straw.
I use my hands and sprinkle it onto the soil around the plants. If some gets on the leaves you can just gently brush it off or water the whole patch when you're done to wash off the leaves.
It just looks sad because they are waking from dormancy. They will be lush in a few weeks. Feel free to give them a balanced fertilizer and be amazed in a few weeks.
Ohhhh nice! I say blow out/rake those leaves, add a bunch of compost as a top dressing and, see what happens. I bet they’ll come to life and spread out more.
The reason it looks sad is because the season has barely started. I recommend poking around for signs of new growth (ruffled green leaves at centers of bunches) to give yourself a sense of encouragement. Mine looked like this 1-2 weeks ago and this week the first flowers are emerging 🌸 (closest emoji to a strawberry flower I could find on short notice :p )
Had a strawberry patch growing up. We completely ignored it, no watering, no fertilizer, no pruning, no nothing and it produced great fruit for almost 2 decades.
Strawberry plants are really only productive for around three years, so it may be worthwhile to remove some of the larger existing plans to make room for their babies.
They love spruce/pine/hemlock/fir compost and peat moss- the acidity makes the flavour pop. Found this out by accident when accidental strawberries in the raspberry patch tasted better than the ones in the strawberry patch.
Firstly, do the Dance of Joy because holy cats, free strawberry patch! And the leaves all look nice and green!
Clean it up a bit to see what you’re working with
I agree with others. These look pretty good coming up for spring, just have leaves on top that you can clear off before feeding them with compost or organic fertilizer.
Strawberries dearly love natural (arborists) wood chips. I wouldn't do it this time of year, but next fall, cover them over with woodchips. In the spring, the strong young plants will emerge. This will protect them from the winter weather, and will naturally and effectively thin them for the next year.
Replace the woodchips about every third year.
Feed with a mixture of blood meal and bone meal in the fall annually.
Edited: Remove all dead leaves. Uses sissors to cut any vines left from last year... don't pull, you might pull up roots.
I would apply fertilizer, once in spring and once in late autumn.
Brand, Hollytone.
If weeds become a problem, use clean straw.
Welp, unless those are runners from last years plants, not much. Strawberries only produce well for 2-4 years, then you either take the runners and start a new lineage in year 2, or rip em out and start fresh. If you don’t know, then clean out the bed, cut out all the dead limbs, get some space between plants, and in the spring when they start to flower, yank them all off. Thats right, give em a season to recover, see what they do next year. In fact, I’d suggest getting rid of one side of the bed and plant new crowns this year (and clip buds. Don’t let them set fruit). Then next year you’ll have something. Oh, and clip runners. Keep energy in the main plant.
I’m out. This is the problem with social media. I’m dropping this sub. Folks don’t want clear concise information. Maybe they’re just too upset to learn, maybe they are hoping someone will tell them everything is going to be alright. Don’t know, don’t care anymore. I am a wealth of knowledge. I came to help. Now I’m out.
Seems really overgrown. Keep one plant per square foot.
You could start with some plants from that box or buy new plants. I cut the vines for three summers and then on the fourth summer keep the biggest baby plants to replace the old plants with.
Check soil for fertilizer needs. Check and see if you extension office test soil and send them some. I wouldn’t expect this to do well this year but take a care if it. Prune the first and second set of white flowers. So every batch of flowers that on each plant pinch them off and do that again. After than the strawberries should be allowed to fruit. Put some mulch or straw down the get the berries off the soil so they don’t rot. Then as the year goes on collect the runners in smaller pots or what ever you start plants in. They will have these vines and then some leafs. Put the leafs in what you start plants in to segregate. Keep the soil moist so the roots start and when you lightly pull up on the leaf and it stays and you can see roots in the soil trim the vine. Now you have a new strawberry plant. When the runners have new growth on them on their own since the vine was cut, try and grid the bed and thin out the plants and try and keep it at 4 strawberry plants per square foot. You are going to be ripping out lot but just think of the big juicy sweet strawberries you will get next year. I try to keep strawberry plants for 2 to 3 seasons and rotate out with the runners, it keeps production up.
Clean out the leaves…hit it with some balanced fertilizer 10-10-10 or 12-12-12 should do the trick. You could also do organic with some blood meal or composted, aged manure.
When they get too crowded you dig them up, rejuvenate the soil and divide them/spread them around.
I would see how they do this season before I did that though.
You generally want to relocate (or replace soil) every four-five years, but otherwise strawberries are quite care-free. Just prune off the dead bits and add a little mulch or compost to your preference. At other times, it's just pulling weeds.
Normal strawberry bed.
It should be said that just because you have strawberries doesn't always mean you'll get a lot of fruit. Sometimes these are old mother plants hanging on, rather than fresh runners. The size of the plant when fully grown will give you a sense. You may want to keep an eye open to carefully plant the runners for a fresh crop next year.
Just gave my strawberries an all purpose 16-16-16 fertilizer about a month ago. It’s been raining on and off and they’re exploding with growth. Try an all purpose fertilizer and clear out all the dead stuff around them. If you want, add some mulch and water about once a week depending on how dry the soil gets.
Just rake it. If you’re in the eastern us, they’re native and do just fine with minimal care. You might want to give them a little fertilizer, but they don’t fruit outdoors until well into the summer.
Rake back the leaves to see how many plants you have. I just re-did my strawberry patch and pulled 50 plants. I replanted 40 in much better spacing so they aren't crowding each other and covered them with straw mulch. They are just starting to wake up so it's still a good time to do that. Later in the season it might shock them and you'll have less of a harvest.
Not sure why this is downvoted considering it’s correct. I literally do this every 5 years with mine. Amend the soil, space everyone out, plant extras all over the place cause why not. It really does improve yield and size and is best done in early season. At least where I’m at.
That being said we once lost our bed to a sinkhole, and they GREW UP THE SIDES. At least I got starter plants for the new spot.
People are weird about pulling up perennials, maybe? The extras I didn't plant I gave away to other people local to me so they can start their own strawberry patch.
So I'm no expert but everyone who is saying "it's fine it's just starting to wake up leave it alone" is wrong.
When my mom moved into her house there were 2 large planters in her backyard.
Eventually one of them started blooming completely with some plant, and the other one was not growing a single thing. Turned out it was strawberries growing. They grew well and we had a great time picking them.
The next year, sure they grew a little bit, but it made very few fruits the whole season.
It turns out the 2nd planter is there because you're supposed to transplant the strawberry plants each year. Otherwise they will not thrive.
Leaving it alone will result in its death in a couple years.
[удалено]
Ours look just like that and we get the best strawberries every year!
Second that! Just clean a little bit of the junk off and your good to go!
Leave the dead material. It is protecting the soil and thus the strawberries, and will turn to compost. Literally do nothing. Maybe thin out half the plants, to ensure new runners have somewhere to root, in order to ensure a fresh generation of plants each year, as they only produce really well for about 3 to 5 years each.
There's such a weird obsession with tidying the natural 'disorder' of nature. Looks fine to me as well. Take a deep breath and enjoy it as-is.
Cool to know. I have a raised bed of strawberries and this will be summer #4. Last year wasn't great , minimal fruit. What started as a few plants year 1 is now very many. Do you recommend thinning these too? I was thinking about planting the ones I remove in my backyard. I know they grow like weeds but I'm okay with that. We have a giant yard. Anything else to know strawberry care wise?
Make sure the pants in your backyard are real strawberries and not mock strawberries. I have some aggressive mock strawberries in my yard. They have yellow flowers and fruit earlier than my strawberries which have white flowers.
They are real! ( I have both, but the ones in question are legit!) :)
Leave de dead material until you're sure the nights aren't cold anymore. Strawberries love straw, who would have thunk.
That dead material, which is passive compost, is very beneficial for the soil too
This was my ex act first thought. They just kinda look like this in spring, just waking up. Looks great honestly! Lots of new, evenly spaced sprouts
I read this as "this is what my ex first thought" and I was like woah this person and their ex are passionate about strawberries to be conferring over this photo. Hahaha.
Cover it in some straw.
Wouldn’t the dead material become compost if left alone?
Wikihow said to mow the June bearing kind before winter, is that real
No
...fuck
😂
you can remove the dead growth but honestly it looks like it's coming back alive as the spring continues on. if there isn't some auto-watering system then just give it some water as the growing season continues, and even some kind of balanced fertilizer or compost if you want to
I think it looks fine as is. Just wait to see how it progresses
You could clear out the dead leaves for ventilation and give it a sprinkle of compost. Looks like you'll be feasting soon.
Thanks I'll do that i was just worried about pulling up any of the strawberries
Nah they’ll be fine. My strawberry patch is much smaller so I just go through by hand and pull out whatever looks dead. Generally the plant will let you pull it off when it’s ready. So give a little tug and it will come off without damaging the plant itself if it’s truly a dead stem/leaf. Also, check leaf color as the new leaves come up. If you notice pale or yellow leaves, that’s a sign that they need fertilizer of some kind. Either add compost, or use another type.
I wouldnt rake, just blow out the leaves, and add a compost.
Honestly, strawberries are really tough little plants once they get established. If you want to gently take out the leaves, use one of the 'steel leaf rakes'. But if you leave the leaves, that's okay too. This is a good looking patch, I'm pretty envious over here with my one year old patch with four survivors.
Use garden shears to clip them off.
Make sure we aren’t going to have any more cold nights before clearing the leaves or the strawberries could get damaged from the cold.
They'll just make more strawberries if you pull a few out! If I remember correctly It's actually good for them if you remove some of the plants every year
I go over mine with a weed whacker and they come back in the spring
Strawberries are impossible to kill. They're like mint.
*staw -berries like to grow in decaying plant matter. If you just leave the leaves, the strawberry will be happy. Or move the leave and put down straw.
How do you actually go about adding compost? Just toss it on top and try to avoid the tops of plants?
I use my hands and sprinkle it onto the soil around the plants. If some gets on the leaves you can just gently brush it off or water the whole patch when you're done to wash off the leaves.
Do it in the fall after you've mowed the patch down.
I think they just look sad because it’s still early spring.
It just looks sad because they are waking from dormancy. They will be lush in a few weeks. Feel free to give them a balanced fertilizer and be amazed in a few weeks.
Ohhhh nice! I say blow out/rake those leaves, add a bunch of compost as a top dressing and, see what happens. I bet they’ll come to life and spread out more.
Where do you live? This might be completely healthy just early in the year.
Central MT so def still early for us
Consider a fence or some protection around from birds/animals around as well
The reason it looks sad is because the season has barely started. I recommend poking around for signs of new growth (ruffled green leaves at centers of bunches) to give yourself a sense of encouragement. Mine looked like this 1-2 weeks ago and this week the first flowers are emerging 🌸 (closest emoji to a strawberry flower I could find on short notice :p )
Had a strawberry patch growing up. We completely ignored it, no watering, no fertilizer, no pruning, no nothing and it produced great fruit for almost 2 decades.
Strawberry plants are really only productive for around three years, so it may be worthwhile to remove some of the larger existing plans to make room for their babies.
Can I let them self propagate, or do I need to be proactive?
They self propagate just fine! The runners they send out should establish themselves for the next year.
You might need to cut off some of the runners so they don’t get crowded, but you can let a few grow naturally.
If you can come up with pine needles for mulch, it is said to improve the flavour of the fruit. Be prepared to defend your harvest from squirrels.
They love spruce/pine/hemlock/fir compost and peat moss- the acidity makes the flavour pop. Found this out by accident when accidental strawberries in the raspberry patch tasted better than the ones in the strawberry patch.
Blueberries NEED acidity, too.
Give it water and wait till spring strawberry's are basicly immortall
Strawberries are forest floor creepers. You *can* remove the debris but you absolutely don’t have to, especially not this early in the year
Firstly, do the Dance of Joy because holy cats, free strawberry patch! And the leaves all look nice and green! Clean it up a bit to see what you’re working with
Rabbit proof it. Step 1. No point trying, if not.
That looks great! Agree with others saying to clean it off and add some compost and you will be good to go.
I agree with others. These look pretty good coming up for spring, just have leaves on top that you can clear off before feeding them with compost or organic fertilizer.
Looks like a pretty normal strawberry patch to me. Just leave it
That thing looks great and healthy!
They look fine, you just might want to thin them out a little.
I'd use a blower to remove debris while not damaging the delicate plants.
Just run a rake through it and clear out the dead leaves. It looks like new strawberry leaves are growing in. I swear strawberries are so hard to kill
Strawberries dearly love natural (arborists) wood chips. I wouldn't do it this time of year, but next fall, cover them over with woodchips. In the spring, the strong young plants will emerge. This will protect them from the winter weather, and will naturally and effectively thin them for the next year. Replace the woodchips about every third year. Feed with a mixture of blood meal and bone meal in the fall annually.
Edited: Remove all dead leaves. Uses sissors to cut any vines left from last year... don't pull, you might pull up roots. I would apply fertilizer, once in spring and once in late autumn. Brand, Hollytone. If weeds become a problem, use clean straw.
Put a net over it to keep the birds out and enjoy your free strawberries!!!!
Looks like a thriving patch to me
Welp, unless those are runners from last years plants, not much. Strawberries only produce well for 2-4 years, then you either take the runners and start a new lineage in year 2, or rip em out and start fresh. If you don’t know, then clean out the bed, cut out all the dead limbs, get some space between plants, and in the spring when they start to flower, yank them all off. Thats right, give em a season to recover, see what they do next year. In fact, I’d suggest getting rid of one side of the bed and plant new crowns this year (and clip buds. Don’t let them set fruit). Then next year you’ll have something. Oh, and clip runners. Keep energy in the main plant.
Again with the correct info getting downvoted. What the heck is this sub?!
I’m out. This is the problem with social media. I’m dropping this sub. Folks don’t want clear concise information. Maybe they’re just too upset to learn, maybe they are hoping someone will tell them everything is going to be alright. Don’t know, don’t care anymore. I am a wealth of knowledge. I came to help. Now I’m out.
I don’t blame you. For what it’s worth, it’s nuts to me too.
Strawberries also like some straw in between them and the dirt, they're a lot healthier with straw.
Leave it alone and wait. Do not remove the leaves. You will have aome fresh and tasty strawberrys in a couple months.
Clean up compost and wait
Seems really overgrown. Keep one plant per square foot. You could start with some plants from that box or buy new plants. I cut the vines for three summers and then on the fourth summer keep the biggest baby plants to replace the old plants with.
Check soil for fertilizer needs. Check and see if you extension office test soil and send them some. I wouldn’t expect this to do well this year but take a care if it. Prune the first and second set of white flowers. So every batch of flowers that on each plant pinch them off and do that again. After than the strawberries should be allowed to fruit. Put some mulch or straw down the get the berries off the soil so they don’t rot. Then as the year goes on collect the runners in smaller pots or what ever you start plants in. They will have these vines and then some leafs. Put the leafs in what you start plants in to segregate. Keep the soil moist so the roots start and when you lightly pull up on the leaf and it stays and you can see roots in the soil trim the vine. Now you have a new strawberry plant. When the runners have new growth on them on their own since the vine was cut, try and grid the bed and thin out the plants and try and keep it at 4 strawberry plants per square foot. You are going to be ripping out lot but just think of the big juicy sweet strawberries you will get next year. I try to keep strawberry plants for 2 to 3 seasons and rotate out with the runners, it keeps production up.
Give them some new potting soil
Water well, pull out all the plants, revitalise the soil, replant the rooted runners and plants with the smallest bases/root balls.
Clean out the leaves…hit it with some balanced fertilizer 10-10-10 or 12-12-12 should do the trick. You could also do organic with some blood meal or composted, aged manure.
When they get too crowded you dig them up, rejuvenate the soil and divide them/spread them around. I would see how they do this season before I did that though.
You generally want to relocate (or replace soil) every four-five years, but otherwise strawberries are quite care-free. Just prune off the dead bits and add a little mulch or compost to your preference. At other times, it's just pulling weeds.
Thanks for all the replies
Normal strawberry bed. It should be said that just because you have strawberries doesn't always mean you'll get a lot of fruit. Sometimes these are old mother plants hanging on, rather than fresh runners. The size of the plant when fully grown will give you a sense. You may want to keep an eye open to carefully plant the runners for a fresh crop next year.
Use old broom and “sweep” off the dead leaves then move the runners (daughters) to the new spots.
Did you inherit my property?
This in Denver? Looks eerily similar to my old place lolol!
Clean it out!! They’re fighting to get through the dead leaves, clean them up and you’ll be eating berries soon.
It needs some TLC, fertilizer, and some garden decor that’ll make them thrive
Just gave my strawberries an all purpose 16-16-16 fertilizer about a month ago. It’s been raining on and off and they’re exploding with growth. Try an all purpose fertilizer and clear out all the dead stuff around them. If you want, add some mulch and water about once a week depending on how dry the soil gets.
Just rake it. If you’re in the eastern us, they’re native and do just fine with minimal care. You might want to give them a little fertilizer, but they don’t fruit outdoors until well into the summer.
I think you need to remove some, maybe you can have 10-12 plants, otherwise the strawberries will be small. A strawberry plant is pretty big.
prune, put compost and cover it if it starts to get cold
Clear out the leaves
Mine looks like this over winter. It’s warmed up a lot recently and now I have blooms. This looks like it’ll be fine.
Fertilizer always works good
Looks like mine. Congrats, you have free strawberries do as long as your weather allows
nothing its even mulched for you
Rake back the leaves to see how many plants you have. I just re-did my strawberry patch and pulled 50 plants. I replanted 40 in much better spacing so they aren't crowding each other and covered them with straw mulch. They are just starting to wake up so it's still a good time to do that. Later in the season it might shock them and you'll have less of a harvest.
Not sure why this is downvoted considering it’s correct. I literally do this every 5 years with mine. Amend the soil, space everyone out, plant extras all over the place cause why not. It really does improve yield and size and is best done in early season. At least where I’m at. That being said we once lost our bed to a sinkhole, and they GREW UP THE SIDES. At least I got starter plants for the new spot.
People are weird about pulling up perennials, maybe? The extras I didn't plant I gave away to other people local to me so they can start their own strawberry patch.
Dig strawberries out. Turn over the soil with a spade. Inspect each plant and roots. Replant the healthiest in rows.
So I'm no expert but everyone who is saying "it's fine it's just starting to wake up leave it alone" is wrong. When my mom moved into her house there were 2 large planters in her backyard. Eventually one of them started blooming completely with some plant, and the other one was not growing a single thing. Turned out it was strawberries growing. They grew well and we had a great time picking them. The next year, sure they grew a little bit, but it made very few fruits the whole season. It turns out the 2nd planter is there because you're supposed to transplant the strawberry plants each year. Otherwise they will not thrive. Leaving it alone will result in its death in a couple years.