Rejuvenating my strawberry bed

This is my strawberry bed. It's got a bit out of control!


Obviously I can't leave it as it is unless I just pick the fruits around the edge and leave the others to the birds (bet they would prefer me to do just that)

I was thinking of digging out all the plants and replanting some of the strong healthy ones back. But before I got around to doing the work they started to flower and now there are some fruits formed and quite a few are nearly ready for picking.

So my question is: when would it better to do the digging and replanting - November or next March/April? My worry is if I do it in November the plants may not have enough time to settle so they may get killed by cold over winter. On the other hand if I wait till next spring will I lose next year's crop?

Any ideas and suggestions???

 

How about removing and replanting 'strips' of them, say every other 300 - 450mm? I'm sure I did something like that many years ago. Even if all the transplants fail you've still got plenty of plants for another attempt. It would also create pathways through your strawberry patch.

 

If it was me I would dig out the lot and start again with new plants.
What I do and have for a number of years now is grow about 24 new plants each year.
If you start from new ,plant what you think you want,say maybe.30 plants, or 2 rows, next year plant 2 more new rows and the same the 3rd year,in the 4th year plant your 2 rows but take out your first year rows,so each year you have the same amount of plants.This will keep you in with good fruit and good healthy plants.

 

P.S. as you can see I have around 60 good plants per year, this year I have 30 plus lbs, in freezers and and 10lb of jam,plus what we have had for tea's with cream or icecream

 

I was going to ask a similar question to HsuH's except when you say new plants do you mean runners or buy new plants, I have plenty of runners but space is limited to 20 plants.

 

If digging them out might be best to move to a new bed, if you can.

 

When @fileyboy mentioned 'new plants' I was wondering the same thing. I would think the runners should be ok? Majority of the plants in the photo above are runners from last year and this year. I did take out quite a few weak and unhealthy plants after fruiting in August, but the runners were soon taking over any bare soil.

Good idea Scrungee.

Thanks Kristen. I was thinking of whether to start a new patch or just to enrich the existing bed by digging in lots of compost and manure

Right, taking everyone's suggesting on board, this is what I'm going to do:
As soon as my sweet potatoes are harvested, I'll take some strawberry plants out to create paths for the existing bed then I'll plant some healthy runners in the present sweet potato bed to create a new strawberry bed. Hopefully get them done later this month or the beginning of November. Next year after fruiting, I'll clear away the old bed.

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By the way, do any of you know about the variety 'Tempation'? I grew one plant from seed in spring, it flowered (no fruit developed though) , then it threw out lots of runners, now I've got 10 plants. They are all still in pots since I dare not put them into ground, with the speed they produce runners my whole garden would be taken over in no time. Putting its ability to multiply itself aside, how tasty and productive is the fruit?

 

I would root a load of runners then rip it all out and start again with your new runners

 

Re my post New Plants,sorry if I did not make it clear ,I set runners in pots then when I know they are rooted cut them from the mother plant and plant in new rows.