Grow Strawberries

Infographic

How To Plant Strawberries In Container

How to Grow Strawberries

Sun-sweetened strawberries, still warm from the garden, top nature's menu of fine desserts. Just a few rows of plants will fill your fruit bowl and freezer, even after you subtract the samples you sneak while picking. By growing different varieties, you can enjoy the luscious bounty of a strawberry patch from spring until fall frost. Here are tips for how to grow strawberries in your yard!

Strawberry Types

The three main types of strawberries are June-bearing, everbearing, and day-neutral. June-bearing strawberries, such as 'Shuksan', grow well in Zones 6-10, but some varieties are better for your local conditions than others. Choose the variety by checking with your local extension office, or go to your local farmer's market in June, buy several kinds, and perform your own taste test. And keep in mind that June-bearers will produce their crop earlier in warm climates -- you could be eating berries in April.

In Zones 6-8 (except for hot, humid areas), you can learn how to grow strawberries that are everbearing (also called day-neutral). Everbearing types, such as 'Quinault', produce two crops -- one in June and one in September -- so they aren't really everbearing (who thought up that label?). Day-neutral types, such as 'Tristar', will produce from June to September, a continual but smaller crop.

June-bearing varieties are often recommended for short-season northern gardens; they offer a bigger summer bounty than everbearers, but plants stop fruiting after the first harvest.

No matter what type of strawberry you grow, select a spot in full sun and that has moist, well-drained soil. Spade soil to a depth of 8-10 inches, working in plenty of compost or well-rotted manure.

The techniques for how to grow strawberries with the greatest success come from starting with new plants bought from a reputable nursery, not plants passed along from a friend's garden. Strawberry plants decrease in vigor after a few years, and they are susceptible to diseases, so it's best to start fresh -- not with hand-me-downs. In fact, your whole bed should be replaced every four or five years.

Choose a sunny, well-drained site, and dig in compost and an all-purpose organic fertilizer. Plant June-bearers in early spring in rows 4 feet apart, setting the plants 2 feet apart. The mother plants make plantlets that will hop around on runners and root. These will fill the rows and create a mat -- let them fill up a 2-foot-wide space, keeping room between the rows for access. For everbearing and day-neutral types, clip off those runners and only maintain the original plants.

Renovating Strawberries

Renovate your June-bearers each year with the lawn mower -- really, it's that easy! After you've harvested, set the mower about 4 inches and mow the beds. Rake out the clipped plant parts, weed, remove baby plants that have hopped out of the bed, and lightly fertilize with an organic all-purpose blend.

Test Garden Tip:The first year of your strawberry bed, you must be brave and remove all flowers from the plants so they can establish a good root system. Keep dreaming of next year's strawberry shortcake!

A straw mulch helps. During the growing season, the straw keeps weeds down, moderates soil moisture, and keeps the berries from sitting in the mud. In winter, it's a blanket to keep the plants cold and dormant until it really is time to start growing. But be careful, because nasty slugs and snails can lurk underneath the straw, just waiting to take slimy bites out of your precious fruits. Use an organic slug control -- one that's iron-phosphate based -- to help protect the strawberries.

How To Grow Strawberries On Your Patio or Deck

One of the easiest fruits to grow on your patio in a container are strawberries. Not all of us are lucky enough to live in the Midwest where they grow wild out in the woods or have a large backyard where you can put in a strawberry patch. Luckily for us, strawberries don’t need a lot of space to produce delicious berries all summer long. Here are some great tips to grow strawberries on the patio.

There are containers that are made specifically for strawberries called strawberry pots and are usually a couple feet tall with openings all over the container. Since strawberries have a small root system, they can easily fit into these tight spaces and then will cascade down the container. They can also grow in nicely tucked into a larger container garden, a hanging basket, or in a regular pot all by themselves. Your imagination is the only limitation when it comes to finding places where to plant strawberries!

Strawberries are a type of plant that has runners or roots that run either beneath or on top of the soil surface. These runners grow into individual plants as they produce their own root systems. They then send out their own strawberry runners and keep multiplying. One strawberry plant can have many runners branching off. You can create many new plants for your own garden or to give as gifts to friends from one healthy plant. Strawberries also reproduce by seed and these are often what you see being sold as transplants. When buying a transplant at the garden store, make sure to buy one that has a few runners that appear straighter than and not as bendable as the roots.

Try different varieties from seed to see which ones you like more as some are sweeter than others. Plant nurseries typically carry just one to two different varieties so it doesn’t hurt to shop at different stores to get a few different kinds. If you decide to grow your strawberries from seed, grab a few seed catalogs and order a bunch because you can’t go wrong at a couple dollars per packet.

Strawberries in containers grow best in amended soil and need to have fertilizer added every 2-3 weeks during their growing cycle. The best way to amend the soil so that your strawberry plants continually produce is by adding compost. Use organic fertilizers like earthworm castings, plus blood and bone meal to give the plants the nitrogen and phosphorous they need to produce their fruit too.

Remember when you first plant the seeds to keep the soil evenly moist and don’t let it dry out. Once the seedlings are an inch tall, cut back the watering to every two days. It is best to give them a long soak and let the water drain out of the container for a minute or two rather than a shallow sprinkling. Fully established plants need to be watered twice a week, more often if you are in a hotter climate and daily in the heat of summer. Plant strawberry seeds at the last sign of frost or indoors 6 weeks before if you want to get a jump start on the growing season.