Last year my strawberries plants grew very thick and spread outside my pyramid box I had built for them.
Although they produced a lot of strawberries, it was very wet during harvest and many were lost to slugs, pill bugs and rot. So, about a month after last year’s harvest had ended I decided to take the weed whacker to them and cut them back hard. My hope was they would come back thinner this year and allow for more air circulation and less rot problems. This technique also was much easier than cleaning them up by hand. This is what they looked like after I whacked them.
After whacking them I immediately gave them a feeding with some organic strawberry fertilizer I use and topped the beds with compost. I kept them well water over the remainder of the summer and protected them with shredded leaves before winter set in.
Early in the spring I vacuumed up most of the leaves and fertilized again. They came back very nice and are getting ready to produce a healthy crop.
Notice that although they came back nicely and are loaded with berries they aren’t as thick as last year. I’m hoping for a dryer harvest season this year and less rot. I also found some organic bait that is supposed to keep the pill bugs under control so fingers crossed for good harvest in a few weeks.
Thanks for reading and please upvote and resteem.