Uprooting my strawberry patch

For the many summers we had a strawberry patch in our new home that was the gift that kept on giving, when the birds didn’t help themselves too much. 

Then last summer the harvest fell down to nothing or almost that. I spoke to a number of amateur gardeners like us about the problem. Some said that strawberries don’t produce forever and others said that it was just one bad season and that next year should be better. 

Since I preferred the latter answer and believed it, I hoped for the best in this new summer of 2022, but this was not to be. 

The result was even worse than last year, double zero, which prompted me to do some more research and find out irrevocably that strawberries become less productive over time, so one has to grow more plants from runners every three to four years to ensure continuing good harvests which of course I didn’t do. 

That way each new generation of strawberries should have been grown in a completely fresh bed enriched with compost to avoid the build up of disease and the kind of death that plagued my patch. 

It broke my heart, but I decided to uproot all the unproductive old plants and I will start anew next summer; in the meanwhile use the space to grow more lettuce. Nothing lasts forever. I should have remembered it!