Rawzoom,

As a norm, you suppose to pick off all the flowers the first season and let them establish. They will have better yield the next season.

Tony

I'm not going to go against the rule of thumb but my first year strawberries wanted to produce like crazy. I was quite surprised at how many berries I got and they had no problem developing runners.

Looking at the bed now, this will be an amazing year.

My friend also grew his first year berries and has had a great second year crop. This will be his third so I would say that if they go like the two examples I've seen they will have no problem establishing themselves.

Make sure to lay down a bed of bone meal under the top soil if you can. Berries love this and it will help your plants receive the nutrients they require.

Mine produce prolifically the first year from seed. I think it may depends on the type you are growing. I never noticed any drop in yeild, however, I didnt pull the flowers off of any, so I dont have a "control" to compare it with

I split the difference last year with mine, pulling off early flower clusters but letting a few of the later ones develope. Didn't get a lot of strawberries that way, but the plants sure grew. They are huge this year and absolutely loaded with blossoms. I can reccomend the middle approach, it seems. :)

Strawberries are frequently grown as annuals in many parts of the country (follow the link for info from California to Minnesota and beyond). Typically this is done with day-neutral varieties, but in my trials this year I am treating June bearing, day-neutral and ever-bearing as equals. Only the runners are snipped but the plants are allowed to fruit freely. Frankly this is much more fun than tending a berry patch for a full year without harvesting. I am treating them as annuals (snip the runners) but will still keep them in the ground for a few years during my trial.

I suppose if your goal is to grow county fair sized berries or commercially perfect fruit, you may want to consider the conventional methods, as well as heavy fruit thinning and greater plant spacing.

MRclint - are you using plasticulture?

No plasticulture here, which is a fairly common commercial practice. I've planted out a 4'x4' raised bed using high-intensity (square foot gardening) techniques. Eversweet and Camarosa are emerging as my early taste test winners when harvested like annuals. But lets be honest, there is no such thing as a bad variety of strawberry. :)

i'm planting 50 fort laramie everberring and 25 winona gaint juneberring 30''x6'x12' rasied bed