Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have this strawberry that is trying to take over the whole growbed and beyond so is very healthy but produces teeny tiny fruit and very few of them. How do I convince it to drop its ambition for world domination and just to settle down and have lots of kids?

What variety is it?

no idea sorry my dad gave me the plant, he doesn't know either

I once had a variety called "Alpine"... that spread and produced small fruit...

then it's better to yank it out and plant a new variety?
which one do you suggest?

Definitely depends on variety. I have one also that has depressingly small fruit. But two others that have good sized. Does it taste any good?

Lowanna has large fruit, Bunyarra has small but sweet fruit. Torrey is a great fruiter and tasty.

I just ate the lot with icecream . yes , very sweet and nice flavour. Wish there were more of them!

Have you tried pruning it back hard? This can sometimes encourage plants to fruit, gives them a "scare". I have done it with fruit trees etc. not sure if it would work on strawbs but I suppose it one step before ripping it out completely.

From the looks of the pictures, the mother plants (in the growing media) are the only plants getting nutrition and there by feeding all the runners and daughter plants. I would definitely trim back to only the plants in the grow media. Maybe you are getting too much nitrogen or nutrients are out of balance for fruit production?

The problem is most likely because the plant is sending out so many runners, and this takes away nutrients and energy that should be put into the fruit. The best bet is to trim off all the extra runners and keep them trimmed, this will allow the plant to put its energy into the fruit. It worked for me with my strawberry plant in the garden...

I agree with the last two posts. Too many runners. The plant puts it's energy into producing runners and little energy into fruit. Strawberry plants are most productive for the first three years and then you should replace them with fresh plants. I would trim all the runners off the plants until the 3rd year and then let your best plant produce runners. Plant the runners from this plant in the system and discard the old plants and start the cycle over again.

And somewhere in my memory I find the note that one should only keep the first plant growing on a runner since every other developing on the same runner would be very weak?
Trying that in the moment and just leave the first one on the runner. Have to wait and see if there is some truth in that.

i have a variety with pink flowers that has being bred to not send out ANY runners!

different varieties produce different size fruit. you should remove all unwanted runners. when i was growing a couple of hundred strawberry plants, i had all but a couple producing fruit. the others were on full time runner production so i could replace the previous seasons stock. strawberries in dirt needed a good feed after every crop of fruit produced. if you don't have good nutrients then you won't get good sized fruit and lots of flowers.


if you keep the variety you have. grow enough runners to replace your old stock and kill any others! (or establish/ give them away) when the dormant season comes in, pull all the old plants and compost them. old plants don't produce the best fruit. don't know about aquaponics and how long strawberry plants stay viable.