About growing strawberries?

Are you positive they are not wild strawberries? The plants look almost the same as the domestic version. (wild=yellow flowers, small leaves, close to ground, all over the northeast) If they are domestic, the fertilizer should not hurt it, it's harder to over-fertilize than under. And with the seasons, applying fertilizer in the spring just ensures that all the nutrients are absorbed when the ground is not frozen.

Your volunteer strawberry plants are most likely weeds.

Wild strawberries have yellow flowers and produce prolific runners adorned with daughter plants.

The fruits are smaller than smal...pithy and totally tasteless berries.

My strawberry patch has always been fertilized in the early spring with generally good results.

From the sounds of it...I've been doing it wrong all these years.