chicago:

Mine are doing the same thing yours are, and all I am doing for them is giving them a little water since it is fairly dry here. If you can keep the patch weed free, that is about the nicest thing you can do for your strawberries. And one of the hardest.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

The Extension Service in either NC or VA recommends (or did at one time) the weekly application of nitrogen from first spring growth through fruit bearing (for June bearers). The recommendation is for commercial growers however and difficult to use (3.5 lbs N per acre per week). I grow about 300 plants on black plastic with drip irrigation and so just run a calculated amount of Miracle Grow in with the water. This seems to work well but I canÂt honestly say how well because I have never done it any other way (and Don's are doing fine with just water). Since dry fertilizer simply dropped in the middles likely does not work very well, the best method for a small or moderate sized patch might be to foliage apply a little Miracle Grow every two to three weeks or so. Maybe try it on part of your berries and compare.

I keep a strawberry patch mixed in with my flower bed as part of my landscaping in the front of my house. I don't do a thing other then cut runners to keep them from taking over my flower bed and in late fall I thin the patch out.

As for weeds, yes, get rid of them if you have a problem with them. I don't have to do a thing because it's in my flower bed so it's mulched.. The mulch won't even stop the stawberries from spreading.

I use to grow berries commercialy. The thing back then was not to fertilize while they were fruiting. They were to be fertilized heavy during the growing year and then after harvest. Their reasoning was that the berries would be soft and mushey.

I not sure why the difference but here is a quote from a NC Extension publication (the rate appears about twice what I indicated,however. Maybe a more dense concentration of plants). Mine don't get mushy unless I let them overripen.

'In southeastern North Carolina, drip irrigation begins at first bloom (late February) and continues through harvest, ending in late May or early June. In conjunction with a plant analysis program, drip fertigation can improve nitrogen and potassium efficiency and possibly enhance berry firmness and quality. Over about a 100-day period from late February through late May or early June, nitrogen and potassium maintenance drip applications are made daily or weekly at the equivalent of 1.0 pound per acre of nitrogen per day, along with I pound per acre of potassium oxide per day.'