2012 pictures of Birth of new strawberry bed through 1st renovation

Those are very well protected berries.

Here is a crazy observation--
My biggest ripened strawberries -at the moment- are coming from 2012 runners, not the fussed over table top plants!
These daughters were haphazardly placed into various boxes on the ground and are out performing my tabletop plants in plant size/vigor, leaf size, and current mature ripened berry size. The downside is the daughter's are only producing a mere couple of large fruit. In contrast the 4ft square table top is totally loaded with smaller plants with hundreds upon hundreds of young green berries and a couple of pink-reddish ones. I'm very curious to see the final production quality of the table top berries.

My question then is - has anyone else experienced differences between in-ground and table top strawberries?

I would like to add compost tea/worm tea to the table top during this vigorous berry production stage to assist with robust fruiting. Hope this is sound thinking....anyone?

Well, now ya made me have to go back out in the cold and look...the curiosity, doncha know...stand by...

I'm not really positive yet as there aren't any ripe ones but I don't think I'm going to have the same experience that you're having. Of course, I don't have the quantity that you do and all mine are in the same bed.

2 smaller daughters with 2 larger parents:

Daughter in front, mother in back:

Do they look any different to you or is it too early to tell?

CC

My daughters in the ground boxes look robust just like yours.
Your parent plants are bigger than my tabletop parent plants. Just dragged my carcass inside from a brief garden visit. This ol' gal is ill today, pain meds and antibiotics not working quick enough..anyway
Hope tomorrow to get back outside briefly and take pictures of the smaller table top plants. I wonder if the the crammed plants in the tabletop is one issue plus enduring more cold stress and wind being raised a couple feet up is another issue? I dunno.

Update--
Forget the daughter plants! They got big leaves and just a couple fruit each. The past 13 days I picked between 450 and 500 berries off the tabletop with 64 plants and still going strong. Not too shabby for a first time strawberry attempt.

Argh! And I just lost three slightly larger but still tiny strawberries to the birds yesterday. I simply must go out and buy some bird netting.

After reading the last few entries in this thread, it encouraged me to go and see what my strawberry bed is up to.

I picked my first ripe berry, so that means there will be more on the way very soon. I soaked the bed with water, pulled a few weeds and put down some mulch then covered it with netting to deter the birds. The bed is a four-foot square that I started the year before last with a few bareroot plants and I have now filled the bed. Lots of green berries there to fill out and ripen.

Thanks for the nudge, fellow SFGers.

I've got my first SFG planted and it's doing well. I have a separate 4x4 dedicated to strawberries. I only bought and planted 4. Now I'm wondering if I should order more online (much cheaper).

Any advice? Thanks!

Yes Donnainzone10 - save that fruit from the birds!
Kelejan- all sounds good!
Krisandbert- I ordered mine from Shumway online, they also answered questions by phone afterwards which was appreciated. Have you looked up your extension service either online or by phone to find out what variety grows best in your area? Could save you a few headaches later on.

Thanks llama momma. I'll give them a call today.

Glad to help out a little

Bump

Thanks for the link.  I liked it enough to bump it.

Nice       

Llama Momma - I've read through your experiences with tt and strawberries and found it most helpful - you are my guru  

Wanted to get the plants out of the ground SF beds and bought two table tops from HD, planning to move the strawberries into them.  After this plan was in my mind, I began to wonder if this moving was a wise one and you have proved to me that it is.

My plants are 1 yr old and the shock of moving them should not hurt them too much - especially if I can get my mm together and in the boxes before they begin to grow this spring.

So many thanks for posting your adventures 

Your Welcome Judy,
Honestly I don't know for sure how the plants will handle the move.  My limited experienced guess is they will be fine since they seem to be as tough as weeds and they go dormant in cold weather anyway.

I'm about to discover out how much abuse they can tolerate in a tabletop from the recent unusual arctic cold with sustained temps below zero.  Survival seems too much to ask of such little plants! The tabletop was covered in pine straw and leaves. If they live through this I'll be amazed and grateful.
Stay tuned.
 

I look forward to the unveling in the spring, LLM.   

I'm very interested to hear how other gardens over-wintered too. 

Besides the strawberry bed there are two more beds,  last spring's brand new asparagus bed, and the other bed was full of re-planted garlic.  I'm suppose to enjoy free garlic this year.  We'll see what nature has in store.

My entire table top of 64 strawberries that I shared so many pictures of their growth earlier in this thread, is totally dead. Brown. Lifeless.  I got a few words to say to Mother Nature and none of it could be said in church.  Lol. I am so glad I saved many runners and re planted those in beds on the ground.  I guess the lesson here is perennials do well in most any kind of brutal winter as long as its on the ground.   I thought the table top may have an exposure issue at some point, so yes it apparently did even though the bed was covered in pine straw and leaves.  Can't win them all and this was a sad loss but could be worse had I not saved runners.  All in all instead of 114 plants this year I am down to 50 on the ground, not a total loss.

Well... there's nothing much good to say about losing all your investment, but at least it was the worst year on record and not likely to ever be repeated in your lifetime *fingers crossed!*

Those 50 will absolutely explode though, so soon you'll be back where you were.  Strawberries are just about miraculous in how fast they spread!

@llama momma wrote:My entire table top of 64 strawberries that I shared so many pictures of their growth earlier in this thread, is totally dead. Brown. Lifeless.  I got a few words to say to Mother Nature and none of it could be said in church.  Lol. I am so glad I saved many runners and re planted those in beds on the ground.  I guess the lesson here is perennials do well in most any kind of brutal winter as long as its on the ground.   I thought the table top may have an exposure issue at some point, so yes it apparently did even though the bed was covered in pine straw and leaves.  Can't win them all and this was a sad loss but could be worse had I not saved runners.  All in all instead of 114 plants this year I am down to 50 on the ground, not a total loss.

  
I'm glad you shared this with us, LM. I wonder if being exposed to weather from the bottom is what did it? It seems that way doesn't it...

Mark my words though, if you have 50 now, by the end of the year you'll have over 200. They are like weeds.I'm already having to give some away as they have been jumping out of the bed and the season hasn't even started yet. they are crazy!

CC
I look forward to a lot of runners with these too.  Last year I gave several dozen to my next door neighbor and he put his box on the ground so maybe I can get some in return. Either way this is not the end just a little set back. 

The ground must be the answer to insulating the plants I guess.  If anyone is reading this that has strawberries survive extreme cold in a table top, I'd love to hear your secret for survival. My pine straw and leaves wasn't enough. I think I pulled the leaves off early enough to prevent them from smothering, too.

Sorry to hear that, LM, and also concerned it might happen to me someday too! I hope you get some good advice that we can all profit from.

LM, Thank you for sharing your story. It may save others from heart ache. I have all 14 winter survivors in a cement tub for a table top like Gwennifer's. [not painted yet] Our cold snaps get down into the low 20's so maybe my berries will be okay if I mulch them for next winter. The 14 survivors have been in those fancy hanging, tiered, compartmental pots.

So sorry, LM.  Please keep us informed of how the runners do.

I feel that if a table top bed full of strawberries is to survive the winter, then it must be built on a solid block of earth, 4'x4'x4', the same dimensions as a compost pile.

My strawberry bed is 4'x4'x8" and is on the ground, we have prolonged  -15C temps during the winter and the plants are now poking through the mulch of leaves I gave them last fall. These will be third-year plants and have survived two winters.  I am lookong forward to harvesting a good crop this year and have enough berries to to freeze to keep me through next winter.

Sorry you lost yours, LLM. I guess a lesson learned by all of us, thanks to you.  This is where this forum is so useful, we can learn by others' experiences.