Hi all, learned a lot from the community over the past 3 years when I put in my first fruit plants. Out of a variety of trees and berries I have growing; strawberries are my first ones to produce with the kind of vigor I aim for. I started with a raised bed of Seascape and one of Albion and next spring will be my first season with a raised bed of Earlyglo.
What recommendations for ever bearing / day neutral varieties (Zone 5b)? I started with Seascape and Albion
If you had to choose 1 variety of June Bearing what would you grow?
How do you manage SWD activity (and other pests) on your strawberries? As the season goes on I’ve been having to pick the berries earlier and earlier to prevent SWD from ruining them
How important is it to prune back runners to keep some spacing between the plants?
Anyone else tried making strawberry wine? Would love to hear your recipes and how it turned out
I think Mara De Bois is worth growing for personal consumption.
Im trying Ozark Beauty after not liking Seascape as much as i thought i would. Perhaps it was my fault on the growing conditions.
I also put in some Eversweet for my just in case of bad summer… They seem to do well in high heat and poor conditions.
Im trying Sequoia as well.
SWD… traps. My strawberry bed is near my blackberry rows. I make Concord grape juice traps. They seem to want grape juice more than anything where i live.
im definately not experienced… im all trial and error so far. I can tell you more of what not to do than i can give good advice.
My current bed is pure manure and rotten leaves and woodchips… with some compost and biochar. No dirt just leftover stuff from my blackberry rows. So far they absolutely love it.
Hope you get some better answers than i gave… i love strawberries too.
I second this variety for an everbearing; it’s wildly flavorful and tastes like a jolly rancher when fully ripe.
I’m a lazy gardener so I kind of give up on the strawbs in the later season to focus on my figs. Will be watching this thread for good ideas for SWD though.
As far as pruning runners… not really important at all IME. It really just depends if you want to optimize for fruit now or more fruit later (prune runners early if you want to optimize for fruit it the current season). I ordered a batch of 30 bare-root Mara De Bois and let them do their thing, still had more than enough strawbs that season and am going to be drowning in them next year with all the runners they’ve put out
I had seascape and they were not to everbearing. a moderate spring crop followed by an anemic summer crop and a blast of fruit in the fall that was destroyed by frost before ripening. I have an unknown June bearer.
And a fourth vote for Mara des Bois! So good I don’t really care to grow much else, strawberry wise. I did just put down some Earliglo though, so I can have the convenience of a June-bearer.
Sounds like I will be picking up some Mara des Bois next spring! I have not seen them available locally, so I’ll be ordering them online - anyone have recommendations for where to get them?
Im a cheapskate so im using peanut butter jars… looks kinda like this setup. Try one with grape juice and try another with wine if u have any leftover. Grape jelly might work too havent tried it yet.
Yes… or punched in with an ice pick or a heated piece of metal… as long as they can find a way in.
I noticed that the cheapo $1 hummingbird feeders would work too… just flip them upside down and pull off the red things. that gives access ports to the bait. Maybe a good idea if you have old junky hummingbird feeders.
