Well, it wouldn't hurt to pick off the old, dead growth. It's probably better for the plant to take off the ones that have brown spots on them, too. Usually, I rake the bed right around spring time before the new leaves can sprout all the way.

Hi guys, at first I want to say WOW, how did I live my life without knowing about this forum. So I really want to plant alpine strawberries in my place, but I live in a very warm place, here we don't have winters, it remains almost the same temperature all year , ranges from 77F to 91F and doesn't drop any lower than 70F or any higher than 93F (like ever) and I'm trying to grow these here. I will try stratification via putting them in the fridge, my seeds come from Spain so I am hoping these are more heat tolerant. But the question is I was just wondering, with these daily temperatures, do I have to pretend to the plant its *spring* by giving it partial shade, before exposing it to the daily +80F average? And do you think that it will actually die in the hot weather, did you ever have problem with plants dying in a hot summer? And if you could prevent how did you do it? Do you guys think its a good idea to give it partial shade or full sun? (we have 12h and min of 11:30h of sun every day ear round being that *winter* is the -30 minutes of sun) That would be very kind of you if you could tell me anything about hot weather and strawberries thanks :)

I did a lot of fragaria vesca last year, and they did very poorly for me. I put them out in feb in zone 5, so they got plenty of cold... and they sprouted almost last, and those that did sprout, were weak and perished soon after. out of an entire packet of probably a thousand seeds... i got probably 20 specks of a sprout, and not one survivor. HOWEVER... I have a pot of established alpines already, and when the fruit gets too ripe and falls off, i just push them down into the soil- they take a while, but there are tons of sprouts in the pot. Maybe the seeds need to be fresh? And PS they were germinating through the course of one season, so i do not think they NEED cold. I am either going to try one more time this year if i can get inexpensive seed, or i will just buy some small starts of the varieties i want- and propagate them from fresh seeds.

Lois, I can only venture a guess that you are either watering them overhead or that you have had a lot of rain. It doesn't take a lot of water on the berries to get them waterlogged and tasteless. If it's overhead watering, switch to a soaker hose or drip irrigation. If it's rain, hope it's drier next year. And make sure to mulch them to preserve soil moisture. Granny Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden