why won't they bear fruit? (strawberries and raspberries)

[AnnaNova]

ive been checking my strawberry plants - no fruit! they bloomed some and no fruit!!! i planted them the year before last and there was hardly any fruit when i planted them, but i thought, well its first year, they have to get settled. but they ve had hardly any fruit at all, and this year i dont see any!!!!
same thing with raspberries. they produced some the first year we planted them, and then this year there s hardly any berries! they've spread around, but theres hardly anything on old plants, not just the new ones!!!
it is so disappointing - i water them and all, and there nothing!

[lunarlady]

Raspberries come in two types, everbearing and...well...not. Everbearing will produce berries every year, but only on their new growth. Old canes will not produce berries. The other kind grows the canes the first year, fruit on those canes the second year. Then those canes will not produce fruit.

Some strawberries are also an every other year type of deal. One year they spread, the next year they fruit. Spread, fruit. Spread, fruit. So they could be in a spreading year rather than a fruiting year. They also won't fruit if you got a late frost that killed the blooms, or if you don't have pollination.

[lmonter]

I was going to say you may have a pollination problem. Do you see any bees, birds, whatever bouncing around in the yard?

Berries tend to have a 3 year cycle. The year of fruit output varies by berry, but still.

[AnnaNova]

we do have birds and ive seen a few bees here and there. it's just so strange, growing up i remember we had berries almost every year, at least a little bit.
i forget which varieties we have now, but we bought them at a local nursery where we buy the rest of our stuff and everything else does very well

[SBCornais]

Could be that you need more nutrients in the soil. I use mushroom compost (organic of course) and that always helps whatever I have planted to have a better yield.

The birds give me a headache, sometimes, by the time I notice I have a red, ripe strawberry, the birds have already gotten to it!

[Hibou]

With strawberries, it seems to help if you cut them back/get a bit agressive with them. My mom had strawberries that grew like crazy but hardly made any fruit, so one year she rototilled a strip through the patch and got more berries than she had had for several years combined. I took a spade to my strawberry patch this spring and chopped the runners up a bit, and they are now full of fruit. One book I have suggests cutting all of the plants right back each fall.

Raspberries- yes, clear out old canes, and feed it some compost. My old patch is a weedy mess, and I'm noticing a decrease in fruit each year. I'm slowly moving canes to a new patch.