Found a strawberry raise bed, how to look after it please?

We have been in our new home for nearly six weeks now, it’s quite a big garden, with the second half of it being originally part of an orchard that was owned by the local farmer. To the edge of the orchard area, at sometime the previous owners had a little veggie patch. We have been given some very old aerial photos of the place and can see a few strips that look like this. Whilst clearing this section I found what was a raised bed with strawberry plants in it. They look healthy enough, but there is a lot of weeds still amongst them. The wood that held the raised bed just crumbled away so I put some pavers around it.





Just want to know the best way to look after the strawberry bed please? Am assuming they are hardy plants, but whether they will fruit next year is anyone’s guess, I’d still like to do the best for them now and see how they fair.

All advice welcome.
Thank you.
Tink

 

Hi,

Cannot see any in that photo, but did you notice any 'Runners' coming from the main body of those plants.

If there are and they have rooted in the soil, provided the parent plants are healthy, then you can dig them up and use them to start a new bed elsewhere as its always better to start them in fresh soil, so if next year that bed is no longer productive you should get some berries from the new runner patch.

 

Thanks @JWK and @ricky101 that all sounds promising, there were some runners, but not as healthy looking as in @ricky101 photo, they were more dried up. There was the odd one that I could see in between all the weeds that had little plants on the end. At the weekend I’ll get in there and clear out the weeds and replant any baby plants in my mini trug until the springtime when we may have a better idea on how we want our GYO area.

We have two greenhouses to erect, a potting shed, a mower shed and a skinny tool shed, all need bases first. The ground is very uneven, so big jobs and planning this autumn/winter, before we can think about planting. We have three full sized vegtrugs and a home made square foot gardening trug thingy to decide position for also. But happy to keep the strawberry bed as is until the rest is decided.

Thanks for you help.
Tink

 

I’ll send my dog round he tends my strawberries

 

Now THAT is what I am expecting from our three labs, they love eating compost, so will have to leave the old plants in the existing bed and lift the new baby plants out and plant them in a raised trug.

Come summer, it’ll be dogs vs birds for the berries!!