Strawberries

I bought a strawberry grow kit this year and a package of seeds, I have 15 sprouted so far. Someone told me that I have to pick the berries when they are green and can't use the berries off the plants I started this year, is this true?? also if I buy some from a nursery/ get some from a friend would I have to wait til next year to get berries then too?

I don't know if this is true for strawberries, but for some plants it helps to remove the fruit the first year to let them focus on root development rather than spending all their energy making fruit. Hopefully someone who knows more about strawberries can tell you if that's necessary with them or not. And that's also why she's telling you to pick the fruit when it's green--that way you're pulling them off before they've wasted the plant's energy. But when you're growing them to eat then you wait until they're riper before you pick them.

My guess (and this is just a guess) is that strawberries that you start from seed now won't bear fruit this year anyway so I'm not sure you even have to worry!

You can get the berries off of the first year's crop, but you will definitely reduce your crop for the future.

At a high level, there are two types of strawberries. One is called 'everbearing', which really means two crops (early Spring and Fall) and one that is usually June bearing.

With the everbearing, you do pluck the fruit the first and subsequent years, but be sure to snip/pinch any runners. Effectively, you divert an everbearer's energy from creating new plant sets to fruiting. The plant will focus on its root system instead and your crop will increase as the years go by.

On the other hand, the June bearers should be 'de bloomed' every chance you get in the first year. They can send out runners, as this is not much of an energy drain on them.

I have only done one experiment in these regards (I have both types of strawberries, but have only had time to due one experiment.) I planted 12 June bearing plants. I removed blooms on two, left them on two, removed them on two, etc... the first year. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that what 'they' say about removing blooms is true. Those plants that had their blooms removed the first year nearly trippled the production of those that didn't in just the first year. The plants shot out all kinds of runners and grew strong. The batch that I did not remove the blooms never produced (over a 5 year period) more then a fraction of what the others did.

In your case, I would probably debloom 10 of them and go ahead and get fruit off of the other 5. You'll get some tasty berries the first year and the ten that do not produce will more then make it up to you later on. Unless you have a huge family, those 10 will give you a ton of berries in following years.