masses of strawberry plants with no fruit

[Jetboy]

Hi all, I am in need of some assistance please. I have been growing a strawberry patch for over a year now and the entire bed is full of plants, 100's in fact, but I have not had 1 flower or straberry, even from the original plats that I planted and have spread. What is wrong, or what do I need to do to get strawberries. Fertiliser or do I have the wrong strawberries

[JONA878]

Hi all, I am in need of some assistance please. I have been growing a strawberry patch for over a year now and the entire bed is full of plants, 100's in fact, but I have not had 1 flower or straberry, even from the original plats that I planted and have spread. What is wrong, or what do I need to do to get strawberries. Fertiliser or do I have the wrong strawberries

The main reason any plant grows Jetboy is to produce progeny.
Strawberries have two ways of doing this.
By seed....which in the case of strawberries is not a particularly productive way...or by runners.

I suspect that your plants have found that they have been allowed to produce runners with no control at all.
As a result you have hundreds of little plants each producing yet more runners and so on.
They have no need to produce flower and fruit...the young plant production line is going far too well and the density of the plants will inhibit flower production anyway.

Get in there and thin the whole block out. Remove all the runners and leave strong healthy plants at around 6 inch spacings.

You should then find they will start flower production again.

[Jetboy]

Hi JONA878, Thank you so much, that makes so much sense, and so obvious. I will get in there and remove the existing runners and new plants. I assume I must then maintainthe plants then by removing all runners as the pop out so that the plants can break out in flowers and produce fruit ?

[JONA878]

Hi JONA878, Thank you so much, that makes so much sense, and so obvious. I will get in there and remove the existing runners and new plants. I assume I must then maintainthe plants then by removing all runners as the pop out so that the plants can break out in flowers and produce fruit ?

Keep the area free of runners for a couple of seasons.
Then you can let some runners develope and the resulting baby plantlets can be started off in small pots so that you have replacements for your older plants.
Strawberry plants will carry on for years but they are best replaced by year five if not before.

[Jetboy]

Thanks so much JONA878, I really appreciate the help, something so simple, and the wife was getting quite unhappy with the fact that she eat any strawberries after a year of waiting. Now I will get it sorted and earn brownie points with my wife, thank you.