Strawberries

[brians]

I am planning on raising day neutral strawberries for the first time, I am choosing day neutrals because I want strawberries this year. I am going to grow Tribute strawberries. AFter researching they appear to give great yield and good fruit even during the summer.

I am going to have a three foot wide raised bed and place a plant every foot. So, I will will have three plants per row (3' wide) and then place a row every foot. This means I will have one plant per square foot. I will initially use newspaper as a mulch around the plants and later add preen when the plants are established. There will be a total of 100 plants .

Should I keep several plants and use them only to propagate seed plants for next year or will there be 100 plants to save even with preen. Or should I buy new plants next year?

How many strawberries can I expect to grow per plant? Is a pint realistic?

Is there anything wrong with what I plan to do.

[Newt]

Hi Brians,

I can't answer all your questions, but I will address what I can. You could plant them all to harvest and not have to worry about getting offsets. Just plant them all and harvest what you like as everbearers don't produce many runners with offsets. You can overwinter them as well. I don't know where you live, but you may find this site helpful. It's in Canada and talks about overwintering.
http://gardenline.usask.ca/fruit/day-neut.html

Here's more:
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/strawberries/growing.html
http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortn...8/plantsb.html

My greatest concern is the Preen you plan on using. Why in the world would you use that, especially with something you would eat? Maybe if you read this you will change your mind and just rely on the newspaper and hand pulling weeds.
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/l...463913628.html

Regards,
Newt