How are your strawberries doing? My plants that I did in the strawberry pot are growing, but no berries.. :( I had one strawberry, that was already on there when I bought the plants, but that ripened and got moldy before I noticed.. LOL Anyone having better luck than I am? I'm just impatient and want some fresh strawberries!!! LOL (which I will get next weekend when we go strawberry pickin at the berry farm for mothers day ;) )

Patience mama. We don't start looking for home grown strawberries until mid-june. The strawberry farms get them earlier becuase they are usually well established plants and they black tarp the ground around them to heat the ground up quicker and keep slugs and other critters at bay.

Remember that once the plant gets to the size you want it, start pinching off runners.

HTH,

Nikki

Great advice... I am not sure where you are, but June is when I start looking too. Plus I have three different varieties in my strawberry bed (yes I have a whole BED dedicated to them, hehe...) and some are earlier and some are later... just some things to think about... usually green house plants have a unnaturally early blooming and fruiting season because of how warm it is in there. Don't worry, you flowers and berries will come back. :)

Love Val

Mine are full of blooms, but no berries yet. Heck, I was so happy to see the blooms you'd think they were berries, lol!

Do you strawberry-growing mamas cover your plants to keep the birds/rabbits from eating them? We tried growing strawberry plants a couple years ago, but the birds ate the berries, then some critter (rabbit?) ate the plants right down to the dirt. I'm wondering if I'll need to build some kind of cover for them - maybe some gardening fabric over the top or something...

Ah, what I'll do for some delicious berries! LOL!

Bumping this one.

The house we just bought (will move in July) has a LOT of strawberry plants in the gardens. I have NO CLUE as to how to care for them.

Wyoming is where we are moving so it gets cold there in the winter and not a really long growing season in the summer.

Michelle

One of the best deterrents I've found for keeping birds out of strawberries is to plant "yellow wonder" strawberries liberally among my regular ones. The birds don't like the yellow ones for some reason and tend to avoid the patch. About your stawberry plant being demolished, it was probably slugs. They are hungry little criters and seem to be strawberry plant gluttons. Set out a couple of half burried yougurt cups fill with beer and drown them.
HTH,

Nikki

Originally posted by Mama2littleman
Set out a couple of half burried yougurt cups fill with beer and drown them.


I'm LOL at that! Thanks for the chuckle...I'm envisioning swaggering slugs making their way through the dirt, hee hee.

Thanks for the tip about the yellow strawberries, too - appreciate it!

Originally posted by 3anklebiters
I'm LOL at that! Thanks for the chuckle...I'm envisioning swaggering slugs making their way through the dirt, hee hee.

Thanks for the tip about the yellow strawberries, too - appreciate it!

I was also *lol* at the picture of beer and slugs....something about that imagery was too funny.

Michelle