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Post by peasonearth on May 30, 2015 12:07:37 GMT -5
I have a box for strawberries that I started last year. The box is probably 1/3 full of plants now, but I'm not sure if they're all strawberries. Some of the plants are growing flowers and fruit, others aren't. These plants have thicker, prickly stems and are way bigger. The leaves look the same, but there aren't any flowers. Is there some weed that looks like strawberry plants? I'm not sure if I should rip them out or not.
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canadiyank
Blooming
Central WA, Zone 6B
Posts: 125
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Post by canadiyank on May 30, 2015 14:03:40 GMT -5
Hmm. Can you post a picture?
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Post by desertwoman on May 30, 2015 14:42:03 GMT -5
Strawberries have generations. The original plant is the "mother" plant. Mothers send out runners that eventually root to form new plants called "daughters" And then these daughters could send out more runners that root into "granddaughters"
If you planted them last year, you probably have mothers and daughters. In general it's good to remove the grand daughters and some of the mothers. The newer ones won't produce for another year, but you want to remove older plants in future years, so there is space between the plants.
Another way you can tend them is to remove all runners as they form and only have mother plants, which will put their energy into producing fruit and not runners. At some point all these mothers will be too crowded so you would remove some and let a few runners form so that you can have replacement plants.
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Post by peasonearth on Jun 15, 2015 11:19:59 GMT -5
Update: the bigger, weirder plants flowered. They were yellow. I knew that couldn't be strawberries. Googled. It's a super invasive Asian weed that's a close cousin of strawberries, hence the similar leaves. Needless to say, those plants got pulled. Thankfully they came out easily.
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