Strawberries - Final Attempt to Get it Right!!!

[Susan BBPM]

We love strawberries but have had really bad luck with them.

2 years in a row we bought bareroot from a reputable source. The first year they all died before spring. Second year all but 2 died.
We've also bought plants from the garden centre every year. We had them in silly strawberry planters at first and they didn't do well there - but they are still alive. Last winter pretty much everything got eradicated by vine weevil. T

This summer we had them all in decent sized individual planters and although we didn't get a huge harvest we now have :

- 6 x 2 year old everbearing plants.
- 10 x runners from everbearing plants.
- 2 x 2 year old honoye plants
- 4 x runners from honoye plants.

How do I maximize my chances of a decent crop (for the first time) next year?

I have a 1m square raised bed set aside.
I have planter of all sizes.

Biggest problems in pervious years

- birds (and then bird netting keeping out pollenaters),
- slugs,
- containers drying out to quickly
-Vine weevil infestation over winter
-Leaves going red in spring (getting too cold?)

 

[YumYum]

They are a pain to me also. I had mine in the ground before but now they are in hanging buckets with holes in them.

I never noticed birds in mine.

In the ground mine kept getting fruit rot, fusarium I think. I mulched them with pine straw which did help somewhat but then moved them to buckets to keep them off the ground. Weeds were a problem too.

Something kept taking a bite out of the few good berries I did get. I suspected slugs but couldn't find the culprit.

In the buckets they do dry out every day. Have to water them every single day, even right now. That is the biggest negative so far as far as the buckets go. I'm going to set my buckets on the ground to let my runners root and then change out the plants with those. If I had to buy the plants every year or two, it wouldn't be worth it to me.

Some of my leaves got red too. I don't know what that means.

 

[Susan BBPM]

They are a pain to me also. I had mine in the ground before but now they are in hanging buckets with holes in them.

I never noticed birds in mine.

In the ground mine kept getting fruit rot, fusarium I think. I mulched them with pine straw which did help somewhat but then moved them to buckets to keep them off the ground. Weeds were a problem too.

Something kept taking a bite out of the few good berries I did get. I suspected slugs but couldn't find the culprit.

In the buckets they do dry out every day. Have to water them every single day, even right now. That is the biggest negative so far as far as the buckets go. I'm going to set my buckets on the ground to let my runners root and then change out the plants with those. If I had to buy the plants every year or two, it wouldn't be worth it to me.

Some of my leaves got red too. I don't know what that means.

I haven't seen birds on them, but like you the few good berries got bites out of them. I assumed birds as it looks different from slug nibbles. When we moved the plants closer to the house and put bird scarers up the nibbles stopped.

I'm looking into some kind of drip irrigation for the containers.

I've been potting up and planting out my strawberries and runners - would you believe the adult plants are infested with vine weevil AGAIN!! I thought I'd eradicated them in the spring with nematodes. There's no sign of the leaves being eaten by adults. I've binned all the adult plants. The runners look OK so I've planted them out. I'm going to buy one last batch of nematodes. The handful of strawberries I've got must be the most expensive on the planet?

I put so much work into them. Why does no one else have these problems??