University of Maine Cooperative Extension fruit and vegetable specialist David Handley demonstrates how to prepare strawberry plants for Maine's winters.
Me: spending more money taking care and growing strawberries than getting the harvest. The love for strawberries and plants is immense. This is a very useful vid, thank you
I know Im 3 years late to the party on this. I hope you are well this day. I saw your comment about not getting berries. I would suggest that you take extra care of cutting off and removing all runners. If you do not, the plant itself will pit its energy into the runners and NOT berry products. By cutting off all runners early and often the plant will be forced to produce more berries. Also , everytime you remove runners. Add some worm casting and natural fertilizer. Also, use straw all round all year. Hope this helps. Happy gardening.
Thank you so much for a great tutorial. I learned a lot and feel confident that my strawberry boat (yes, my plants are in an old fishing boat that is filled with styrofoam, so nicely insulated!) will be ready for our cold Wisconsin winter. I have some netting that I use to keep the birds away which I will use to keep the straw from blowing away. Again, thank you very much!
Is there any reason why you can’t cover your strawberry plants with leaves after all in the fall we have an abundance of leaves to rake up why not put them to use in the garden if needed.
I have strawberry plants in my square foot garden in Pennsylvania, boxes of 4x4 feet with stone blocks for boarders. Did not know that hay had lots of weed seeds, so I'll use straw instead. Thanks for video ! Looking forward to more video's on gardening.
Great video. It was so informative and you got straight to the point. This is my first year and we are heading into winter. I am in Virginia Beach we still have some warm days ahead so I have time to get them in the ground. Thanks again
very informative video....my strawberry plants are in a hanging basket. I bought them at a dormant stage, and just recently set them into fresh soil. I see that they are shooting fresh leaves. For the winter how can I protect them?
So then, newbie question for you please. I'm in zone 6 significantly south of you. You said you don't worry about mulching them until after Thanksgiving and before Christmas. My question is, I have been worrying about freeze warnings and frost warnings but I see my plants still have berries growing and flowers and the leaves are very lush and dark green even though it's been in the 50's in the day time highs and hit around 30 a few times at night and consistently around the mid 40's for about a month now as tomorrow will be November 1st of 2020. This evening I covered my *in-ground plants* with cardboard boxes, because I wasn't sure what to do but I was sure it would be wrong to lay straw down as they are far from dormant. Listening to you and considering you're further north than we are here, I take it you are not too concerned about frosts and freezes, unless these freezes are at temperatures near single digits... Is this correct thinking? Just wait for them to go dormant and don't worry about the weather too much unless I see single digits??? Thanks for any help.
I'm in zone 6 too and have the same questions! Its been beautiful here this past week but now that temps are dropping I was about to cover them until I saw this video. Guess I'll hold off but would love an answer to your questions as well.
@@ittsacrazyworld young plants planted a bit late usually, they will fruit the same year as you plant them from bare roots or planted runners, they will then flower late in the year, most likely wont be the same the following year etc.
They will have to clean it up either way the following year, when they take the mulch off. Some do that before mulching, so you can just remove the mulch come spring and you're already good to go. taking off the dead leaves before mulch, might help with stopping some infections or diseases from the dead/dying leaves.
Can i ask to using straw to one country like Sweden with a lot of snow is gonna work ? because i the temperatur is like in winter -5 to -25 I want start to plant strawberies and be a new farmer here in Sweden so i looking informations about that. Thanks a lot.
I have a row of strawberries about 24 feet by three feet, got loads of strawberries last summer. But never knew about protecting them during winter. Its late February now yet we had not got a really cold winter, will they be ok?
Just from my own experience I have never prone my strawberries are either keep a see-through plastic bin over them throughout the winner or last winter I didn’t put anything on them and they did fine now I do not prone them at all but to each their own. I’m not saying you’re not supposed to but I’m also not saying you’re supposed to because I don’t know but just for my personal experience I’ve never had a problem with my strawberries by just leaving them alone.
They will have to clean it up either way the following year, when they take the mulch off. Some do that before mulching, so you can just remove the mulch come spring and you're already good to go. taking off the dead leaves before mulch, might help with stopping some infections or diseases from the dead/dying leaves.
Thanks for the information. It was great. I shred all my leaves to place over my garden in the winter. Would this be suitable to put this over my strawberries? If so, how deep should the "cover" be? Thanks, Tom Cipriano.
+Tom Cipriano I wish he would of covered using leaves..but from my personal experience, on my garlic, I found that shred leaves was a bad idea, because they compacted down very tight and held too much moisture which lead to a rot problem.. however, beds where I left the leaves whole I didn't have that problem.so, unless I hear other wise I plan to use whole leaves (just use the leaf blower to blow them in place), and then I cover the leaves with bird netting to hold them in place.to answer your other question I put the whole leaves on at about 12-16 inches deep.. they compact down to 6-8 inches over the winter which seems to be plenty of protection here where it gets down to -10F
