Thirty will provide you enough for a few pies and maybe a batch of freezer jam if you treat them kindly. Everything I have learned not only in the garden but in other areas people have helped me with freely--it's a community kinda thing. Happy berry pick'n.

Also that's my approach: it's worked for several years now, and is a hybrid of other approaches. Find what works best in your situation and share!

If you put them out last year you should take a crop this year--keep the blooms, take off the runners. Let a few runners go 'next' year....

Below is a note I posted on facebook for my neighbor--let's start there.
Strawberries for Linda and Ducan:
There are several ways to grow strawberries and a couple major varieties. Here, I'll be sharing one way to grow both varieties (June and everbearing).

Strawberries quit producing quality berries every 5th or so year, so this approach is aggressive focusing on simply keeping good berries on the freezer, and might be thought of as a 3 and a half year plan.

Year 1(both varieties). Plant your berries about 8-10 inches apart. Pull all blooms off, and tend the runners--cut them every one off.

These plants will establish themselves for year 2.

Year 2: Take a crop from your plants and still keep the runners pruned--this is a lot of work and should be tended during two main runner spurts in early summer and fall.

Year 3: Let a few runners or a spurt, escape your attention. These will be new plants for renewal of the patch year, in which case one begins at year one again. This will be your most productive year, and the mature plants will really be producing. Still, it's time to start renewing the patch, and perhaps if it is too cumbersome, to have two or three rotating patches using runner ''''new plants''''.

Year 4(or as mentioned 1/2): Total renewal. Your old plants should be retired and replaced with new 1 year old stock. You could probably squeeze another year out of them, but with all the work required it is probably (in my opinion) best, to stay a year ahead of the cycles.



Slugs: sunken small cream cans with rim at ground level with cheap beer--guaranteed to work.
Birds: plant along a fence even if having to erect one so you can use cheap netting from Walmart. I've used old screens from windows, screens from doors or whatever...
Straw: (as in straw-berries), break the straw in half, and ease up under the ripening fruit after blooms to keep the berries off the ground. Think of it as squares under the plants rather than circles--lessons learned.
Chipmunks: bb guns are great.


Bottom lines: strawberries like apples, are actually labor intensive but once one gets their groove, simply becomes consistent work.
Family of Two: at least 25 plants with expansion to renewal patches considered.
Family of Four: 100 plants with a developed love for strawberries.
Freezer Jam/cobbler with Breyer's Ice Cream: Priceless! Hope this helps.