I am unable to add pic..

First of all...what do you want with your plants? Do you have enough room to expand your 'patch'? Do you want to expand your 'patch'?

To care for your 4 or 5 plants, they need to be fed somehow. If you have fertile soil, they will do fair without feeding, but some good feeding is helpful. Strawberries are fairly short rooted and need watering anytime it is dry. You also need to keep weeds and grass out too. You should get some berries this spring.

After fruiting, let them make some m,ore babies spaced 6 inches or more apart if you want to continue the adventure.

Of course I don't even know whether you have June bearers or "everbearers". Also, if you are in the north, the plants do better if covered with straw through the winter.

I planted them in one corner of my 4x4 garden bed with tomatoes, cucumber, basil around. It's fertile soil, we try to make the square foot gardening mix. We live in zone 7. The strawberry plant was watered with others till sept, no watering since then, I'll go do it now. The plants are currently about 6 inches apart, but they are rater small plants not bushy at all.And the plants are so low in ground, where will the strawberries hang? That's how I have always seen them. I'll try to upload the pic again, I haven't been here since it became houzz, so somehow I am finding it challenging.

I brought them in april last summer from lowe's, the pot had 2 plants one went in ground, the other in a pot, pot one gave a few strawberries in summer, while the ground one kept giving babies. Soil around our house has a lot of strawberry "weeds" so that makes sense. Keeps creeping in from a marshland our neighbor has, which is so weird.

The one on the end of the picture with the lightest green leaves is the parent plant.

wsp1122, Thanks for your reply..

That's exciting.. I am so amused, and probably thinking ahead for our own garden..I will whole heartedly give the 4X4 patch to strawberries.. We have ample land to make more garden beds.. And I totally see that happening, as you mentioned, because I remember pulling out a few babies of this plant to help it build it's own health, and yet I have so many new established plants.

Question for you; Like I see in your pic your plants are quite far apart, is that how they are always? or do they come closer when they bloom in season, since you mention you use them as cover; I was thinking they'll be dense.

Having them enter in my lawn is a major deterring factor for us if that happens. I already pull out an outrageous number of wild strawberry plants from our lawn.. Does just the weed wacker take care of that?

here's last June...they do get dense. This is the right side of the steps, the picture earlier was the left of the steps. In this bed there are 2 pear trees and under the windows furthest to the right are three blackberry bushes and there are three blue berry bushes on either side of the steps. That crap apple tree is in the process of being changed to a multi crop apple tree. So far I have spliced a gala apple to a branch that I cut. Soon I will do some other types of apples or I may just take it out and plant a white nectarine (my favorite, but I don't have any of those trees yet....seems like the perfect spot)
Close up....Sorry about the picture quality....these are under my apple trees. (13 varieties spaced as supper spindle type orchard). Yes it can be a pain creeping on the lawn. When they send out the runners after picking season you can simply turn the runners inward away from the lawn. If they start to take hold pull them and re plant them in a different part of the yard. Look up back to eden gardening there is a youtube channel with great videos L2Survive

OMG.. Lovely pictures.. I am definitely looking at eden garden..

All these lovely trees brings me to another question, can we plant these trees now in this season.

Also do you get organic trees, last fall we asked a couple of garden centers around about organic trees, they said it's extremely hard to grown organic fruit trees, you'll not find any in the area. What is your advise on trying to source or growing organic fruit trees? And berries too please.. Thanks!

P.S. : I am so so impressed by your orchard, it's amazing kudos to you.

I bought most of my trees and strawberries from starkbros.com I will hit up Lowe's and home depot last in the season for crazy sales.

here's a Santa Rosa plumb tree bought at home depot in July for $4, it was going to be tossed. It looked a lot worse when I got it, but the vase structure was there, just needed some cutting to get it going again. I wouldn't get too caught up on organic lables. I think it's more important what you do to the plants after you get them.

I bought some organic potatoes from while paycheck put them in the ground, nothing grew so they were treated with something to keep them from sprouting....while I bought other potatoes from a typical grocery store and had a huge crop of potatoes.

For planting now it depends on your zone...I'm in 6 so I would probably plant end of April early May. Look to nature when to plant when the tees start bud, it should be safe. If possible get bare root trees. When I plant the tees I add nothing to the soil, I figure why spoil the tree if it's not going to grow there, I'll dig out up and move it where it will grow.

We are in zone 7 (Richmond, VA) and the trees have started to bud, we have beautiful cherry blossom and white flower trees in our backyard, they have already come in bloom, some of them even have leaves sprouting.

That's what the conclusion we came to, it really depends on what you do to your plants once you bring them home. Sadly to put the USDA organic label, farmers have to pay so much and subsequently the buyers. We will also get regular vegetable plants this year, and grow them organic.

Strawberries give fruit the second year. You can usually get three fruiting seasons out of each plant, so by the second year you want to take the runners and start transplanting them over to a new bed. After three seasons discard the plants and replace with runners from another bed.

Feed the plants in the spring. I use a complete organic fertilizer like Down to Earth Acid Mix. Mulch lightly in the summer. Completely cover with mulch (like shredded leaves) in the winter.

I know that strawberries need to be planted in such a way as to not bury the crown so doesn't the complete covering with mulch in the winter cause problems? Do you then remove most of the mulch in early spring to expose the crown again?

Harry

No I just leave it. The plants will push through it and runners will route themselves through the wood chips. I will only move the chips back if I am planting a new plant.