We talk a lot about growing vegetables on this show but, in truth, I am a huge fruit eater. I love fruit, either on it’s own or on a salad, in smoothies, in desserts, love it. Being someone who is a proponent of sustainable agriculture I also prefer to get my fruits locally if I can. That’s not to say I don’t always have bananas in this house and that I don’t love a good Mandarin orange, but if I can grow it myself, I feel much better. Fruit trees can be intimidating, and they can be temperamental if you don’t have the right soil conditions, berry canes and bushes also require a bit more care and maintenance. Which is why strawberries are the sort of gateway fruit for vegetable gardeners. You can plant them in ground or in containers, you can grow them in many different climates, and even minimal effort in maintenance will improve the yield dramatically.
So, today on Just Grow Something we’ll talk about growing strawberries. Whether you’ve got an in-ground bed, a raised planter bed, or just a container on your back deck, we’ll talk about the soil and nutrient requirements, planting in the spring or the fall, maintaining the bed, potential problems, and more. Let’s dig in!
Question of the month for April: What have you struggled with the most in terms of garden maintenance and did you find a solution? Maintaining soil nutrients, reducing weed pressure, proper mulching, proper watering techniques, whatever your garden needs that you struggle with or that you used to struggle with and have found a solution. Answer the question from within Spotify, reply to this week’s email newsletter on Friday with your, answer in the Facebook group or send me a DM on social media. You have until April 30th to give me your answer and share your struggles and solutions with your fellow gardeners.
References and resources:
Strawberry | Description, Cultivation, Nutrition, Uses, Species, & Facts | Britannica
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Karin Velez [00:00:00]:
We talk a lot about growing vegetables on this show, but in truth, I am a huge fruit eater. I love fruit, either on its own, on a salad, in smoothies, in desserts. I love fruit. Now being someone who is a proponent of sustainable agriculture, I also prefer to get my fruits locally if I can. Now that's not to say that I don't always have bananas in this house and that I don't love a good mandarin orange, neither of which, unfortunately, will grow in Missouri. But if I can grow it myself, I feel much better. Fruit trees can be intimidating, and they can be temperamental if you don't have the right soil conditions. Berry canes and bushes also require a bit more care and maintenance, which is why strawberries are the sort of gateway fruit for vegetable gardeners.
Karin Velez [00:00:44]:
You can plant them in ground or in containers. You can grow them in many different climates, and even just minimal effort in maintenance will improve the yield dramatically. So today on just grow something, we're talking all about growing strawberries. Whether you've got an in ground bed, a raised planter bed, or just a container on your back deck. We'll talk about the soil and nutrient requirements, planting in the spring or the fall, maintaining the bed, potential problems, and more. Let's dig in.
Karin Velez [00:02:32]:
So the strawberry is a member of the Rosaceae family or the rose family, and it goes by the scientific name of Frigaria x ananasa. So anytime that you look on a plant tag and you see that scientific name contains an x between two of the names, that letter x indicates that that plant is a hybrid. And so the strawberry is of hybrid origin. And in the case of strawberry, it's of 2 different species. There are species of strawberry that are native to temperate regions all around the world. However, it was the union of 2 specific species native to the Americas that gave us our garden strawberry. Figaria virginiana is a species of strawberry native to North America. It has lots of very fragrant berries, but they are also very small. Historical records show that Fragaria virginiana was taken from the Americas to France in 16/24. Now Fragaria chiloensis is a wild species of strawberry native to Chile. Are you seeing a pattern here? Virginiana, you know, maybe Virginia, somewhere in North America, and then chiloensis, native to Chile.
Karin Velez [00:03:47]:
Yeah. That's oftentimes how scientific names work. In any case, that strawberry species bears much larger berries, like the size of walnuts. So it too was taken to France, but this was done later than Virginiana. This was in 17/12. So, presumably, both species were widely grown side by side in European gardens. And, of course, when we grow species of plants in the same family very closely next to each other, we can get crosses between those two species, which is exactly what happened. Some of these crosses, these resulting plants, were very vigorous, large fruited, very productive plants.
Karin Velez [00:04:27]:
And so those were then saved and cultivated, and they likely served as the ancestors of our modern garden strawberry, Figaria x ananasa. Here's the fun thing about strawberries. So you know how tomatoes aren't actually a vegetable, but they're a fruit? Well, botanically, the strawberry is not actually a fruit. It's not even a berry. The fleshy part that we eat is the enlarged receptacle of the flower that holds the ovaries. So from a botanical perspective, a strawberry is not a true berry. It is actually an aggregate of achenes. So those little black dots that we refer to as the seeds that are on the surface of the strawberry are called achenes.
Karin Velez [00:05:14]:
That is the ripened ovary that contains a single seed inside of it. It's very strange, and, of course, we just simplify it and say that it's a berry or call it a fruit when fruits actually contain their seeds on the inside, which is why a tomato is actually a fruit, not a vegetable. But let's just move on before we get into a really deep hole here. There are 2 different times when it is appropriate to plant strawberries. Oftentimes, this is done in the spring from either bare root plants or from rooted cuttings, or we can do this in the fall from plugs or plants. Now, I prefer the fall, but most gardeners, myself included, will start with bare root plants in the spring. So let's talk about planting strawberries in the spring from mostly from bare root plants, but you can also do this from rooted cuttings. Bare root strawberry plants are the least expensive way to get strawberries growing in your garden.
Karin Velez [00:06:11]:
You can usually buy a higher number of them for less money than you can with rooted plants. So whether you decide on bare root or started plants, and regardless of whether you decide to plant them in the spring or the fall, you have some decisions to make, and the first one is variety. So first things first, you need to select a strawberry variety that is suitable for your climate and your garden space. June bearing, everbearing, and day neutral are the 3 most common types that we use for garden berries, and they each have their own unique fruiting habits. June bearing strawberries usually only produce one vigorous crop of berries, usually in the spring into the early summer. With that being said, the plants usually produce little to no fruit in their first growing season. So if you're planting it in the spring, this is usually the type of strawberry where we're pinching back any flowers and runners, allowing the plant to put all of its energy into healthy root development in the first season. So by the 2nd season, we kick off with lots more growth, and you have larger berries.
Karin Velez [00:07:22]:
So anytime you hear advice to make sure that you're pinching off the blooms, this is the reason why. And this counts for those June bearing strawberry plants that we plant in the spring. June bearing strawberries form their flower buds generally in late summer to early fall for the next season. This usually happens when the day length is less than about 10 hours per day. And then these flowers are going to bloom in the early spring, and then they're gonna produce an abundance of very large juicy berries in the spring right about across about a 2 to 3 week period. Late spring into early summer, that is when the fruit ripens. So you're going to get them pretty much all at once. Some of the most popular June bearing plants are called Early Glow, Honey Oi, All Star, Jewel, Chandler, and Ruby June.
Karin Velez [00:08:16]:
I actually grow both Chandler and Ruby June here. I have grown honey oil in the past. The reason that we grow June bearing is kind of because of a sales perspective. You know, it's a we're a market farm, and so if we wanna bring things to market, we generally have to have an abundance of it. And so we kind of want it to do all of that picking in that 2 to 3 week period and sell all that fruit at that stage. This also works well if you're somebody who wants a lot of fruits all at once in order to be able to make jam. You don't wanna be able going out there and only getting a handful of strawberries at a time and then having to freeze them and hold on to them in order to make your jams. If you wanna do it all at once, then a June bearing plant is what you're looking for or multiple plants.
Karin Velez [00:09:02]:
Now because June bearing strawberry plants bloom and fruit so early in the season, these are the ones where the fruits can be damaged or killed by late spring frost, especially if you live in a colder climate. So if you can just keep your frost cloths on hand, row covers, even cold frames, if you have just a small area, are good for helping prevent frost damage. So if those blooms start to open up really early and then all of a sudden you see you're gonna get a hard frost, then go ahead and get them covered up. A lot of gardeners in cooler climates will grow both everbearing and June bearing plants, so they always have harvestable fruit. Because those June bearing plants tend to sometimes be lost in the spring. The June bearing plants are more heat tolerant, though, of everbearing strawberries. So they tend to do better in climates with hot summers. And if you kind of have both, like here in Missouri, we have those cold springs, but then we also get really hot summers.
Karin Velez [00:10:03]:
Then growing both of these side by side is a really good idea. So let's talk about those everbearing strawberries. They bear fruit 2 to 3 times per year. So it's not like it's a continuous harvest, unlike the way that the name sounds, everbearing. But you're gonna get flushes. So you would see your first strawberries also with everbearing strawberries during that 1st year of planting. So you'll likely will get 2 strawberry harvest, 1 in the late spring, 1 in the late summer. You might get a third one in the late fall.
Karin Velez [00:10:38]:
So everbearing varieties, 2 of those are Ozark Beauty and Seascape. I have grown both of those also. And then there's day neutral strawberries. These flower throughout the summer months and into the fall, and so they they are the ones that are sort of the continuous bearing ones. I don't know why we say ever bearing for the previous ones because it doesn't really make sense. The day neutral ones are the ones who really do produce continuously. The productivity and the fruit quality of day neutral strawberries seem to be much better than the old everbearing types, and these 2 are also going to produce a pretty good yield in the 1st year they're planted if they're planted in spring. And they will still be producing fruit in October during milder years around here.
Karin Velez [00:11:28]:
So the only drawback to day neutral strawberries is that they do produce smaller strawberries than the June bearing and the everbearing ones. So you kinda have to decide what's more important to you. You want the big fat berries, or do you want smaller berries that just continue coming all season long? So those are your your 3 main choices for garden berries. There are alpine berries and other ones that you can do, but the June bearing, the everbearing, and the day neutral are the most common for garden berries. So the next thing to do is to determine where you are going to grow these berries. You want a sunny spot. Strawberries do best in a deep, sandy loam soil that is rich in organic matter, and that soil must be well draining. Strawberries do not like to to have their feet wet all the the time.
Karin Velez [00:12:16]:
They will be prone to root rot. So stay away from any areas that are gonna stay wet really late into the spring. You want a location with full sun exposure, so at least 6 to 8 hours a day, and something that's slightly acidic, pH of 5.5 to 6.5. That's about normal for most of our vegetable garden plants, so they can grow right alongside our normal, veggies. And then before planting, you know what I'm gonna say, do a soil test. Check to make sure you've got the nutrients that you need. Amend the soil with organic matter, you know, compost, blood meal, bone meal. These things are gonna add nutrients.
Karin Velez [00:12:50]:
They're also going to improve drainage. If you find that you are really short on nutrients and you wanna just use a quick acting fertilizer, something organic that is like a 10, 5, 10, that's a really good one to use. You know, £2100 square feet or per 10 feet of row, could be used prior to planting. You just want to be sure that if you are using fertilizer, you're not putting it directly below the plants when you're putting them in the ground. So you don't wanna, like, dig a hole, drop the fertilizer in, and then drop the plant in. That's a no no, that the fertilizer might actually burn the roots of the transplant. So you want to just mix it in to your entire bed as a whole, not drop it right in the planting holes. So, when we're planting bare root strawberry plants, you want to dig a shallow hole that is wide enough to accommodate the roots without them sort of bending or crowding.
Karin Velez [00:13:51]:
So you want to place the strawberry crown, that is where the roots meet the stem, just above the soil surface, and then spread out those roots. And then firmly press the soil around the roots so that you're eliminating air pockets. We want those roots to sort of fan out from away from the crown to allow them to go ahead and immediately start to grow. Now one kind of way to do this is to do a hill system. So you kind of mound up soil about 6 to 8 inches high, about 24 inches wide, and then you plant them this way. A lot of people will cover these with a weed barrier, you know, like the, landscape fabric, and that does reduce weed growth. It does help keep soil from splashing on the leaves, but if you want to have your strawberries reproduce, then I don't recommend putting down any type of a weed barrier because you want some place for those runners to root, and we'll talk about that here in a minute. So I just prefer to do strawberries in some sort of a a bed system because you can grow them in what we call a matted row.
Karin Velez [00:15:01]:
If you like to have it very neat and very tidy, you can put them in a raised bed. You can use the weed barriers and drip irrigation, but I, again, prefer to have the soil be open to those strawberries, even though it means you're going to have to mulch and you're gonna have to work with the weeds. And since we want soil that is well draining, if you're adding compost or even coconut coir, this is gonna help to aerate that soil a little bit and make sure that it doesn't allow those roots to sit in the water at all times. Now, of course, after you plant, you do wanna water them in really thoroughly just to sort of settle the soil around the roots and wake those plants up, because bare root plants are generally going to be dormant when you receive them. They're not gonna have foliage on them. You're just gonna have this sort of spider looking root with the crown above it that you're gonna put into the soil. They will very quickly wake up when you do this. So get them watered in, put a layer of organic mulch on top.
Karin Velez [00:15:58]:
Straw is really good for this, hence, the term strawberry. That Yeah. They they say that's where it came from. I don't really think it did. I actually think the the term was from strewn berry. Anyway, it doesn't make any sense. But straw is a really good mulch. Gonna conserve the moisture.
Karin Velez [00:16:15]:
It's gonna suppress the weeds. It's also going to protect the the fruit from coming in contact with the soil. So we want the runners. I keep mentioning the runners, we'll talk about them in a minute. We want the runners to connect to the soil, but we don't want the fruit to be sitting in the soil. So if you use the straw, this is a really good way to help protect those berries.
Karin Velez [00:18:05]:
Now, once your brand new spring planted berries have gotten through their entire season and you're heading into the fall, you just kinda wanna go back and evaluate the condition of those strawberry plants. You wanna pull out any diseased or damaged foliage just to prevent the spread of pests and diseases. Check the overall health to make sure that nothing needs to be added. I would do another soil test at this point and apply a balanced fertilizer or an amendment to add any nutrients that might be needed, and that it can do its work over the winter in the off season. And that way, your strawberry plants will be ready to go again in the spring. Once the plants have gone dormant, and if you're in a place that gets frost, this is usually right after the first frost, add a layer of mulch around the strawberry plants to insulate the soil and to protect the crowns from freezing temperature. This is gonna help prevent winter injury. It's also going to promote earlier spring growth. If you are in a very cold area, this is absolutely necessary if your ground freezes solid and remains that way for a while. You want thick layers of mulch. In other areas, a very thin layer may be all that's necessary.
Karin Velez [00:19:20]:
That's usually what we do here. And then in warmer climates, say, like zones 7 or warmer, you actually won't really need to have any mulch at all or any additional mulch. You should have mulch down, but you won't have to actually cover up the plants. Now if you don't plant in the spring, or maybe you missed the window of opportunity and you want to get strawberries in, I highly recommend fall planted berries. In my experience, because you are planting rooted plants in the fall. So these are either going to be plugs that you purchase from a nursery, or these could be runners from somebody else that have rooted in. They're actively growing, and they're actively rooted. So they are going to get into the ground, and they are gonna take off in getting themselves settled in and ready to go.
Karin Velez [00:20:10]:
They're not putting any energy into producing flowers or fruits at that stage of the game. Their whole goal is to get rooted in and then go dormant. And what happens is in the spring, they will wake up, right away, and they will immediately start to do the whole flowering and fruiting thing. All they're doing in the fall is setting those buds for the next season and rooting in the ground. So it's a really good way to get early fruit the following year, and get them sort of going if you didn't get a chance to do it in the spring. Because let's be honest, there is a lot going on in the spring, and maybe starting a new strawberry bed isn't the highest thing on your priority list. So fall is a perfect time for this. You're gonna plant the rooted plants into the prepared soil, similar to the way that you would do any other type of a transplant that has roots.
Karin Velez [00:21:03]:
But again, you wanna make sure that those crowns are right at the soil level, and sort of spread those roots out within the planting hole before patting it down and covering it. We never want to bury the crowns of the strawberries. And then just the same thing after planting, water them in really nicely just to settle the soil, keep the soil consistently moist for a few days, but we don't want it waterlogged. So water regularly throughout the fall season just to encourage that root establishment. So, again, your normal way of watering that I usually promote, which is, you know, less frequent, more thorough, this is gonna apply here as well. Water it down to the 6 inch mark in the soil. Don't water it again until the top 3 inches have dried out. And then, again, per usual, apply a layer of mulch, straw, shredded leaves, whatever, around the strawberry plants.
Karin Velez [00:21:55]:
Again, it's gonna conserve soil moisture. It's gonna suppress those weeds. It's gonna protect those crowns from freezing during the cold winter months. And you wanna generally, with strawberries, maintain a mulch layer of about 2 to 3 inches thick unless you are promoting those runners. Okay. So let's talk about those runners. What is a runner and what are we doing with them? So when you're maintaining your garden bed, first of all, you want to monitor it for runner production. Okay? Typically speaking, strawberry plants are only productive for about 3 years.
Karin Velez [00:22:44]:
And then they stop producing, and they'll start to die off. So the way that the strawberry produces itself is through runners. These are elongated stems that come out from that main mother plant, and they have these tiny little plantlets at the end of the stems. Everywhere those little plantlets touch the soil, they are going to start to root. So this gives you new baby plants off of the mother plant. These are really good for filling in the gaps in the bed or for starting new rows. So this is how we operate. We do, like, a matted bed or a matted row system.
Karin Velez [00:23:24]:
So we'll have the strawberries planted in 2 rows, side by side of each other in the same bed. They're spaced about 12 to, 18 inches apart in the rows, and there's about 24 to 36 inches between those rows. We allow the runners to fill the section between those rows. So we'll kind of if they try to go to the outside of the bed, we'll zoom back into place and allow them to sort of fill out the middle space. This is where it's important to have an area that is not covered by mulch, because we want those runners to be able to set their roots down into the soil, and having straw or something in the way of that can be an issue. So I will generally just sort of push the straw aside from the middle section between those rows, and I will just direct the runners into that space. The other way to do this is to just kinda let them, you know, root wherever they're gonna root. Trim the runner from the mother plant once it has actually established its roots, and then move it wherever you want it.
Karin Velez [00:24:30]:
I've also seen where people, if you have a smaller bed and you see those runners starting to come out, you can put the little pots underneath them with some soil and allow them to root that way, and that way, you have them in pots. This is great if you have strawberries in a container, and you want to root those runners, and maybe you don't have enough room in that raised planter or even in your inground beds if you don't have enough room for them. You can go ahead and do that. Eventually, that mother plant is going to stop producing. So if if you can keep track of the first planting that you put in and know, oh, these are the original plants. Now we're 3 years in. These are no longer gonna be producing. And again, they're probably just gonna die off on their own anyway, and come springtime, you're gonna be pulling them out.
Karin Velez [00:25:11]:
But once you pull them out, you will have these other runners to go ahead and replace them with. So this is a really good way to just sort of maintain a continuous supply of plants that you don't have to worry about going and buying new plants to replace those mother plants. Alright. So what pests and diseases do we have to look out for in terms of our strawberry plants? Let's talk pests first. Crown moth larvae or crown borers are white grubs that will hollow out the center of the crown as they feed. If you see evidence of these, you need to just remove and destroy the infected plants and set out the traps for the adult moths. Slugs like to eat the leaves and the fruit. You can exclude these guys by just hand picking, and getting rid of them.
Karin Velez [00:26:02]:
You can, use diatomaceous earth around the beds to help them. People will also trap them in shallow saucers of beer, so the slugs are attracted to the beer, and then they drown in the beer. Tarnished plant bugs, these are small green or brown bugs that feed on the fruits, and they cause the fruit to be really distorted. So if you can cover your plants with an insect netting or a floating row cover of some sort while the fruit is developing, that will keep those guys out of there. And And then, of course, we have birds and deer and all kinds of other things that like to feed on the berries. So you can cover the plants with bird netting. If you have mice that also love to eat, or, rabbits that like to eat on the berries, and they can kind of get through that bird netting, then once again, those floating row covers will work. So if you put insect netting over top, you're gonna have to pull that netting back in order for the flowers to be pollinated.
Karin Velez [00:26:55]:
But then once you see that the flowers have been pollinated, then it's time to go ahead, and you can cover it right back up again with that insect netting. And that way, you're now protecting the developing berries. Here's a key thing to notice with your strawberry flowers. Once they are pollinated, the center of it will really start to look like the green sort of tip of a strawberry. If the center of that flower is black, however, then it has not been properly pollinated, and you will not get a fruit out of that. So you'll see them side by side right on the same plants. So, you know, some that will be pollinated and some that won't be. But that's a good indication that, okay, pollination has occurred, and you can go ahead and cover those plants back up again.
Karin Velez [00:27:42]:
As far as diseases are concerned, gray mold is probably one of the biggest ones that I see is this is a botrytis blight. It produces a fuzzy gray coating on the blossoms and the berries. So if you see this happening, you need to remove and destroy the damaged flowers and the fruits, get them out of the garden, Harvest fruits frequently before they become infected. If you have seen this in your in your strawberries, just make sure that you are having the fruits fairly early. You're out there every single day. We'll talk about harvest here in a minute. And you can also use compost tea to sort of spray across the plants. It actually acts as a natural fungicide.
Karin Velez [00:28:24]:
Red steel, this is a root rot that causes the plants to wilt. So if if the your plants are wilted, and they seem like they have plenty of moisture, and it's not something where it's been hot and they bounce back overnight, like, they are just continually wilted, you may wanna dig up one of those wilted plants. If there are no sort of side roots being sent out or the roots are reddish inside when you cut them lengthwise, then this is that red steel root rot. You need to remove and destroy the infected plants. There are, red steel resistant varieties out there that you can buy if this has been something that you end up having a problem with in your garden. Verticillium wilt, this is one that affects a bunch of different plants. Strawberries are no, no different than that. It's a fungal disease.
Karin Velez [00:29:13]:
It causes those older leaves to turn red or brown, and then the young leaves will start to yellow, and they will wilt. There is no cure for Verticillium wilt. You have to remove it and destroy the infected plants. So if you have experienced Verticillium wilt in any other plant in your garden, then make sure that you are planting disease resistant cultivars of your strawberries, which oftentimes are the same ones that are, also resistant to that red steel, so that helps. And then leaf spot is a fungal disease that will cause these small ground, or gray spots on the leaves. The leaf tissue will eventually sort of deteriorate and die, and eventually, the leaves will just drop off. If this is happening, just pull the dropped leaves out of the planting, and just make sure that you are cleaning out the beds really well at the end of the season. If you know of gardeners in your area who have had problems with leaf spot and they've sort of warned you off of planting strawberries, there are disease resistant cultivars for leaf spot too, so you can go ahead and kind of hedge your bets against that one.
Karin Velez [00:30:19]:
Now as far as harvesting your strawberries, generally speaking, strawberries ripen about 30 days after they've flowered, so be prepared. You are going to want to check your plants every single day after that point. Berries will ripen very, very quickly, And you don't want them in the garden getting overripe because that is a surefire way to attract diseases. Not to mention, you lose out on the berries. Right? So pick them when they are fully colored, and they will be nice and tender and sweet. If you have a problem with, pests, getting to your strawberries, you can pick them a little bit early. You can pick them when the ends are slightly white, and they will continue to ripen indoors. If a berry is ripe and you're going to harvest it, just make sure you're just you're pinching off the stem when you harvest the berry, and you are not, like, pulling on the berry itself, because that can actually damage the plant, or you could damage the berry.
Karin Velez [00:31:20]:
As far as storage is concerned, you can refrigerate fresh strawberries for a few days, probably not more than a week. Glass containers are really good for this. You do have those plastic clamshells with the holes in them to allow them to breathe. If you have those sitting around from previous fruits, that's fine. Freezing strawberries is a a really easy way to just kind of keep them for longer. I will throw just the whole berries into a freezer bag and store them for later when I have time to make jam. Strawberry is my husband's absolute favorite, and if he has to buy it in the store, it kills me. So I try to make sure that I have frozen berries on hand to be able to make a quick batch of jam, but that sure as heck isn't gonna happen in the middle of the gardening season.
Karin Velez [00:32:01]:
So, for longest storage, pick your berries when again, if they are they are slightly white on the very end, that is okay. If you need to hold them for a while, they're gonna last longer that way. They're gonna continue to ripen, and they will keep in the refrigerator for a few days longer than if you pick them when they are red, red ripe. But of course, you know, the flavor to me seems to be better when they get to get to full ripeness when they're in the garden. Again, just make sure that you don't leave any overripe or rotting berries in the garden. Make sure you're pulling them, and you're disposing of them, putting them in your compost pile, because that will help to prevent the spread of disease. So that's a down and dirty rundown on growing strawberries. One thing that I didn't mention was how you can renovate the beds.
Karin Velez [00:33:58]:
Every 2 to 3 years, you can renovate the beds just to kind of rejuvenate the plants and maintain their sort of growth and vigor. So after the last harvest of the season, depending on what type of berry you are growing, you can mow or just trim the foliage to a height of about 1 to 2 inches. And then you can look and see which are sort of the older plants, and you'll be able to thin out the bed a little bit by removing those older plants and then replanting new ones to make sure that you have continuous production. This is where those runners really come in handy, and just mowing everything down really just sort of invigorates the entire bed and makes sure that you have plenty of tasty berries for the following spring. Until next time, my gardening friends. Keep on cultivating that dream garden, and we'll talk again soon.