How to grow a lot of strawberries
If you have strawberries and you don't do anything to them, they will still give you fruit, don't you worry. If you take care of them, they will give you three to four times more. This spring I had so much I was able to gift them to everyone, make jam, and still had enough to consistently have them multiple times a day. So I think I figured it out!
Strawberry plants love to send off shoots and make new strawberry plants, which can be bad because they will overtake your garden if given the chance, but it's also good, because you need new strawberry plants every so often. If you have old plants, they won't produce as much, you want 1-3 year old plants in your garden, they'll give you the most fruit.
Fall is the right time to sort out which strawberry plants you want in your garden for spring; you pick out newly made ones and plant them a fair distance apart. You do not want to have strawberry plants anywhere near each other, the more space you give them, the bigger strawberries they make. They should be at least a foot apart from each other in all directions. And then you can just leave them to set root during winter, I mulch them to prevent weeds.
In the spring, you have to make sure they do not have weeds. They start establishing themselves and deciding how large they plan to grow in February, and if there's weeds, they're assuming they don't have a lot of space and grow small. If they have lots of land to themselves, they decide it's the time to grow as big as possible and thus create many more strawbs. When you see them growing new green leaves, it's a great time to fertilize. It will again, help them grow as big as possible, and also let them know there's plenty of resources here and they can just go wild. I use urine dilluted in water (1:10 ratio) but any nitrogen fertilizer works. I also re-mulch them at this point to prevent weeds, and because I use decomposed tree leaves to mulch, it will provide additional nutrients. You could also add compost to them if you have it, or cover the ground in straw. I think they got called strawberries because they like being mulched with straw.
After doing all this you can relax, unless you live in such a dry weather they need to be watered. Here they establish themselves from February to April and we generally get such rainy weather they don't need any help. Once the plants are established, they'll make lots of flowers and start to make strawberries for you. They'll also send of shoots (earth-level vines) to try and make new strawberry plants, and it's encouraged to snip the shoots off so the plant puts all her energy into making the strawbs for you.
And that's all, after this you only have to pick the beautiful strawberries and enjoy them. Once they're producing, they'll be big enough to cast shade and out-grow the weeds. If slugs attach them, pick them just before they're completely ripe because slugs are picky and won't eat a slightly sour strawberry. If birds attack them, place painted red rocks in the garden; birds will pick at them and figure it's all rocks and bad for their beaks so they'll stop being interested.
