PERPETUAL STRAWBERRIES
Did I mention already that I became so sick of discovering blight on my strawberries that I threw nearly all of them away? The Sonata, the Cambridge Favourites, the Honeyoye, the Elsanta. All gone. It is a waste of time, space, and effort growing crops that are unhappy in this ever changing West Yorkshire, high-up-on-the-Pennines climate and it is better to spend my money on good quality fruit from the stores. However, there was one strawberry type, just one, that remained untouched by such fungal problems and that is the perpetual flowering and fruiting one. I had just one and it was expensive. Last year it gave fruit but no runners. This year it is throwing out lots of runners and I am securing them into small pots of compost to grow on. That solitary strawberry plant has been flowering since spring and producing perfect fruits, albeit not in abundance, not yet, ever since.
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Despite what the RHS has written, my perpetual strawberry is in its second year and far outshining what it produced last year. Best thing is to decide for yourself but keep on rooting runners if you need them. Otherwise, chop them off.
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This is what the Royal Horticultural Society has to say about perpetual strawberries:
Large fruited ‘perpetual’
strawberries form
flower buds in summer to crop from late summer into autumn over a long period.
Perpetuals bear fruit in regular flushes from July until the first autumn
frosts. To ensure a good late summer crop, remove the first flowers of the
season produced in May. Fruit size and yield reduces in the second year and they
are best replanted annually.
Despite what the RHS has written, my perpetual strawberry is in its second year and far outshining what it produced last year. Best thing is to decide for yourself but keep on rooting runners if you need them. Otherwise, chop them off.