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Strawberry towers

Does anyone have any tips on growing strawberries in towers? I was curious as to pruning for maximum fruit. There is lots of info online about growing strawberries in dirt. I have not found any pruning tips for towers. I have my towers on constant water drip but it runs quite a bit of flow. I thought of turning it off at dark then back on at daybreak. Would that be too much time without water? Any info out there would be of great help.

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Permalink Reply by TCLynx on May 27, 2013 at 7:38pm

Rules for growing strawberries are going to vary by region and type of berries you planted. Where I live, we have to plant strawberries as annuals, we need to get short day (June bearing) plants in the fall to plant out for production over winter.

For good production you will want to cut off the runners. Since you have the plants in towers, you probably won't be growing them for multiple seasons in there (or they will get root bound) so you probably are not going to be plucking off all the flowers for the first season like they tell you to do for the first season on new plants set out to make a dirt strawberry patch.

As for turning the flow off at night, well provided you have other filtration for your fish tanks, the strawberries are probably fine having no flow at night as long as they don't completely dry out. Truth is strawberries like to have dry crowns so you want to make sure the part of the plant coming up out of the media is not getting constantly wet since that is likely to cause crown rot.

Permalink Reply by Wendell Ford on May 28, 2013 at 5:20pm

TCLynx said:

Rules for growing strawberries are going to vary by region and type of berries you planted. Where I live, we have to plant strawberries as annuals, we need to get short day (June bearing) plants in the fall to plant out for production over winter.

For good production you will want to cut off the runners. Since you have the plants in towers, you probably won't be growing them for multiple seasons in there (or they will get root bound) so you probably are not going to be plucking off all the flowers for the first season like they tell you to do for the first season on new plants set out to make a dirt strawberry patch.

As for turning the flow off at night, well provided you have other filtration for your fish tanks, the strawberries are probably fine having no flow at night as long as they don't completely dry out. Truth is strawberries like to have dry crowns so you want to make sure the part of the plant coming up out of the media is not getting constantly wet since that is likely to cause crown rot.

TC thanks for the info. I live in South Carolina so we have mild and short winters. I am not wasting flowers the first year since they only have a three to five year lifespan. I planted three varieties of ever bearing strawberries since the the towers are new. If will have some room to plant some June bearing to winter over this fall. I have discovered crown rot and berry rot when the plants got too much water. That's kinda why I thought turning water off at night may help. I also turned down the flow and installed rings over the bottom of each cut out to help eliminate water spill over the edge onto plants below. I have been cutting off the runners but was wondering if they would produce plants and or produce fruit? If so I could plant elsewhere and produce some in dirt.

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on May 29, 2013 at 5:38am

I've done something where I took some moist peat and tinfoil and wrapped it around where the runner would root and after it starts making some roots I cut it off the parent plant and plant it elsewhere. But letting the parent plant make runners will rob some of the energy it might otherwise send to making berries.