"Fergal" wrote in message
...
Hi

I had a go a growing some strawberries last year without much success. I
got
a few diffent plants from garden centre including Cambridge Vigour,
Favourite and a couple of others I can't remember. I stuck them outside in
growbags (6 plants in each) on a raised platform and watered, fed with
tomato food after the flowers had formed and picked off dead leaves etc. I
used growbags as I don't have a lot of space. The few strawberries that I
actually got were very tasty, just not many of them.

I totally neglected the plants over the winter with the intention of
binning
them this year and trying a different technique. They seem to have perked
up
though and I've taken off and planted some of the runners which also seem
to
be doing well. Last years plants have loads of flowers at the moment. I've
read that flowers should be picked off. Why is this? As the old plants
seem
to be doing well in last years growbags, I've left them. Should I
transplant
them to new growbags? Any other strawberry growing tips?

TIA

Fergal

PS I'm in the Bristol area if it makes a difference.

Well you shouldn't pick the flowers off or you won't get any strawberries.

You've probably heard people advising the pulling off of the runners to
concentrate the plants efforts into making fruit. The plants will pretty
much do what they want though, after flowering and fruiting decide how many
you want to keep, and reduce to that amount, keeping a mixture of old and
new to get the best of both worlds.

Steve