Strawberry Crowns (Farm12 2/22/22) Ended

The roots look good to me.  Don't mess with success. Keep on doing what you are doing!

Day 52. I'm thrilled to see new blossoms on the plants!



Today there were half a dozen ripe strawberries. I've been harvesting one or two every couple of days--enough for the occasional snack.



I'm still amazed that these plants are producing full-size strawberries. They're a little smaller now, but they're juicy and sweet.

Thanks! I'm still amazed, because my AG strawberry crowns did so poorly. That made me think that "grow strawberries in your Aerogarden" was mostly advertising hype.

I have another dozen crowns from the same Burpee shipment in the garage. Before long I'll take the Zebras out of the Farm Plus 24, and plant the crowns if they still look okay. (The Zebras really belong in a Farm XL, because they're indeterminates that grow fairly tall.)

I want to find out whether strawberries (Albions, anyway) will do well from the outset if you do nothing other than weekly R&Rs with close pH monitoring (6.2-7.0).

Very few of the Burpee strawberries have been misshapen. Today I found this one, the first that is truly deformed.



The commonest cause is frost damage, but it may also be the result of incomplete pollination. It's possible that the garden was too cold at night when I had the central heating turned off a few weeks ago.

Strawberry frost damage

The strawberries generally continue to do well. They seem to like being maintained at a pH between 6.5 and 7.0 (more or less).  There are quite a few developing berries in among the leaves, and a few are visible in the dark area of the photo if you enlarge it.



It intrigues me, that the flowers mostly show up above the leaves, but the ripe berries are always found underneath the leaves, at the very bottom of the plants.
DcKpvN

Wow, all the fruit/seeds are on the bottom.  That is odd.  But I too see some fruit in the darkness.

Day 88. 5/21/22 update. Strawberries seem to be very sensitive to nutrients and pH!  Even with weekly R&Rs, my Albion strawberries end up with acidic water after a few days (red-orange, not pale blue-green in the pH test).

Two weeks ago I was too busy to test the pH every day, and the roots looked mostly black at the R&R 7 days ago. The water was brown, and there was brown sediment at the bottom of the bowl. (I was siphoning out the water at the R&Rs, which always leaves some water at the bottom.)

The foliage looked okay and the plants were still flowering, so I did a full R&R that included emptying and washing out the bowl.  I also pruned out the brown leaves and other underbrush.

At today's R&R, the roots looked much better, with white roots visible. There was still visible sediment in the water, so I emptied and cleaned the bowl again. Healthy strawberry roots seem to be light brown to dark gray.

These plants have always had black roots at the bottom. the crowns came with long dark brown roots that I was afraid to trim very much--and the black parts aren't mushy.

I harvested 8 tasty strawberries, and there are more developing on the plants. Hopefully my prima donnas will require less upkeep if I keep the pH fairly constant at 6.5-7.0!

They have recovered nicely.  I wonder if all the sediment is from the soil/dirt they were in prior to you getting them?

Day 114 (Ended 6/16/22) Yesterday I ended the Albion strawberries, because I was tired of (1) testing the pH all the time, (2) doing complete R&Rs (including washing the bowl) every week, and (3) watching the fruit flies or gnats fly up whenever I touched the leaves.

Turns out it was a good idea, because nearly all of the roots were black again. This happened after I did a siphon-only refill the last time and failed to adjust the pH every day.

I won't try to grow strawberries in a Farm again, because they need so much daily attention! It's much easier to change the water completely if they're in a Bounty, and the plants don't need much vertical space. The roots keep to smallish root balls, too.

The Albions grown from Burpee crowns purchased and planted at the very beginning of the growing season produced quite a few delicious strawberries. They probably would have done even better if I had monitored the pH and the roots from the start.

The strawberries started from sale-priced crowns purchased at the end of the growing season have produced lots of tall leaves, but few strawberries.