Strawberries are absolutely delicious, and can be very easy to grow. They don’t require much space, so if you don’t want to grow them in a large garden you can easily grow them on a balcony or small porch. One of the biggest pros to growing strawberries in your own garden is you’ll know what pesticides are on the strawberries. Generally store bought strawberries will still have large amounts of pesticide residue on them after being washed, which is a frightening thought.

Strawberry Grow Site

Strawberries need three main things to grow successfully in their best environment: rich nutrient filled soil, a good amount of sunlight, and good drainage. Your strawberries should get a minimum of six hours of sunlight every day. The soil you use should contain high organic matter. Strawberries will rot if they sit in water for too long. The need constant moisture on them, but make sure you site drains completely.

Types of Strawberries

Before you purchase your strawberry planets, you should know they will be classified into three different types: June-bearing, day-neutral, and ever-bearing. Each of these types will produce strawberries at different times during the season.

June-bearing Strawberry Plants

These strawberries produce all their fruit during the month of June. There are early, mid, and late season plants, but that just indicates which part of June they will bear fruit in. These types of plants work well in dedicated garden environments, as they can grow quite large and develop long runners. If you have a plot big enough these runners will eventually grow into new plants. The whole plot will produce berries at the same time, but you’ll have to wait until the plant’s second season of growth before it will produce any fruit.

Day-Neutral Strawberry Plants

These types of plants will consistently produce quality berries from spring until fall. In the fall, the crop will be noticeably larger. Although these plants produce strong yields, they don’t grow very large and stay smaller. Be careful though, these plants do not fare well in areas that have very hot summers. You will see these day-neutral strawberry plants produce fruit in their first season of growth.

Ever-Bearing Strawberry Plants

These plants will also produce fruit from the late spring until early fall. The will constantly be growing fruit, but only small quantities grow at once. These plants are better for smaller growing environments as they stay smaller and don’t have large running vines. Just like Day-Neutral plants, these produce fruit in their first season of growth.

How to Plant Strawberries

It’s very easy to plant strawberries! First you should prepare your grow plot with rich soil so that the berries will have the best nutrients available to them. In your grow plot, use a shovel and dig holes that are as big as the rootball on the plants. Plant each plant so that the crown of the plant is slightly higher than soil level. After this is done, make sure the plant is secure and then water them well. Make sure to check the drainage on the plot as mentioned earlier. After the plants have been planted, we recommend spreading organic compost, straw, pine needles, or shredded leaves.

The red strawberries are ripe. The green strawberries are unripe.

Keep a careful eye out for the first signs of flower buds. You’ll want to remove these first buds from the plant if you are growing the ever-bearing or day-neutral plant types. This will make the plant stronger and let it establish itself before it starts bearing fruit.

It is important that you don’t plant your strawberries anywhere in or near an area that is growing potatoes, peppers, eggplant, or tomatoes. These plants may harbor the disease verticillium wilt, which could potentially infect your strawberry plants.

Keeping your Strawberry Garden Healthy

Fertilizing Strawberries

Growing strawberries successfully will require giving them a constant supply of nutrients to maintain the amount of fruit they yield. You should feed your plants once per month with both blood and bone meal. Always make sure to keep weeds out of your strawberry patch also. Weeds will steal both nutrients and moisture from your strawberries very quickly. Always remove any fruit that is rotting as soon as you see it, and keep the plant harvested of berries that are ripe.

Watering Strawberries

Strawberries need a consistent amount of water available to them, but they should never just be sitting in water. It is very important that the soil you choose for your plot drains well, or you could be facing a potential rot on your berries. The amount of water needed per week to produce fruit is one inch. Because strawberry plants are shallow rooted, you don’t want to let the soil dry out too much or your plants will stop producing fruit. Spreading mulch over your gardening plot as mentioned earlier will help keep the moisture levels consistent.

Keeping Pests and Disease Away

One of the better things about growing strawberries is that you’ll have to worry about very few problems with pests. Unfortunately, they few pest problems strawberries can develop can be very annoying to deal with.

The biggest threat to your berries will more than likely be birds. Strawberries happen to be a favorite of birds, and absolutely love to eat fresh berries. It’s a simple fix to take care of the bird problem though; you just need to simply cover your entire garden plot with netting. Bird netting is available for purchase in any home and garden center in your city.

Slugs and snails may also be a potential threat to your strawberries. These two pests also rather enjoy eating strawberries much like birds do. Copper deters slugs and snails because it will cause an electric reaction when it comes in contact with the slime snails produce. You can use old pennies or strands of copper wire and establish a perimeter around your garden to keep them out. Find out some other repellents used to fight garden pests.

When it comes to diseases you should worry about in a strawberry garden, the main one you should be aware of is verticillium wilt. We mentioned it earlier in the article, as growing strawberries near certain types of plants (like potatoes, peppers, eggplant, or tomatoes) could spread this disease to your strawberry plants. This disease will stop your plant from producing fruit, but you should be more worried about it killing your plant entirely. Once a plant is infected, there is no way to control the disease. You must pull the plants out by the root and start again. There are certain varieties of strawberry plants that are certified as being resistant to this disease.

Citrus Rinds

These have a chemical in them that will deter corn earworms. It’s possible to make a spray solution by chopping up the rinds and then putting them in a plastic container. After this, add water to the ground up rinds and let them sit overnight with the water. Use about a quart of hot water for this method. After letting them sit overnight, strain out the rinds from the water and put the solution in a spray bottle. You can then spray the plants affected by the corn earworms.

Citrus Rinds can be used to deter corn earworms.

Old Tires

These can be used to repel cucumber and squash beetles that will destroy your crops. Just place an old tire around the plant and let it grow within the tire ring.

Old Tires can repell beetles.

Wood Ashes

Another method to get rid of cucumber beetles is to make a mixture of wood ashes and water. To do this, mix a 1/2 cup of ashes in 2 gallons of water. That’s all there is to it; after making this put the solution in a watering can and water the plants. Be warned though that this solution is very alkaline, so if you have alkaline soil, don’t use a whole lot.

Banana Peels

These are great to make aphids stop bothering your plants. All you have to do it peel a banana and place the peel around the base of the plants. Do this as long as the aphids are a problem. A plus side to this method is that potassium within the banana peels will help stimulate larger blooms on your plant.

Peppermint Tea

This is a great way to repel Colorado Potato Beetles. Put two peppermint tea bags in a quart of hot water for thirty minutes. After this, let the tea cool and then strain and put in a spray bottle. Then spray it on the plants. This is supposedly a great solution all around to repel bugs from plants.

Peppermint Tea can be used to repel pests

Materials Needed

First off, you’ll need the following items before getting started:

• Bricks or wood to build a base
• Garbage can
• Material to put in a compost bin
• Water

Homemade Compost Bin Instructions

Alright, let’s actually turn the garbage can into a compost bin.

Step 1: Punch holes in the lid and throughout the garbage can. Oxygen is part of the process needed to decompose the material.

Step 2: Chop up all the debris and materials you’re putting into the compost bin. The makeup should be about 50% green materials (grass clippings, manure, etc) and the other 50% should be brown materials (newspapers, saw dust, etc). You don’t have to fill the garbage can all at once; you can add material in whenever it becomes available.

Learn how to make compost.

Step 3: Spray water on the material until it’s damp. Don’t spray too much though; you don’t want it all the way soggy.

Step 4: Put the lid back on the garbage can and sit the garbage can on some bricks or a platform of lumbar. You don’t want the garbage can to get rusty or rot.

Step 5: Mix up the materials on the garbage can by shaking it daily, or at least once or twice a week. You can add more plant material whenever you get it.

Step 6: Make sure the material is always slightly damp, like as dry as a rung out sponge.

Step 7: In about a month you can harvest your compost material to be put on your crops.

Some consider compost making to be a complex process, but it’s rather simple it the long run. All you really need to do is supply to proper ingredients and then let nature take over from there.

Where to make compost bin?

You can buy bins from the store designed to make compost in, but really they are all just the same. A compost bin isn’t even necessary as you can build a compost heap and cover it. On the other hand though, bins have a neater look and are easier to manage. You can buy a compost bin from any type of gardening store, or offline. You can even create a homemade compost bin if you’d like.

Ideal compost bins have the following features:

• a lid or cover
• easy accessibility
• no gaps in the sides
• possibly insulated with cardboard or straw

The location of your compost bin should be:

• directly on the soil or ground
• away from water sources
• in a sunny or slightly shady spot

What materials can be made into compost?

• Anything once alive can be composted. Items such as meat, dairy, or cooked food should be avoided as they can attract vermin and pests.
• A mixture of things works best. With experience you will learn the right balance, but a good start is to use equal amounts of greens and browns.
• Things that rot quickly such as grass clippings and young weeds. This will get the compost started, but own their own will decay to a smelly mess.
• Older plant material rots slower and gives body and mass to the finished compost.
• Wooded items decay very slow, and are best chopped or shredded first.

Compost Ingredients

The following are green or nitrogen rich ingredients:

• Urine (diluted 20:1 with water)
• Nettles
• Grass cuttings
• Comfrey leaves
• Tea bags and leaves
• Coffee grounds
• Raw vegetable peelings
• Soft green prunings
• Manure from herbivores (cows, horses, etc)
• Poultry manure (chickens, turkeys, etc)
• Young weeds (do not use weeds with seeds)

Brown, carbon rich ingredients:

• Newspapers, although it’s probably better to just recycle them
• Glossy magazines, although it’s probably better to just recycle them
• Cardboard (cereal boxes, egg boxes, etc)
• Waste paper and junk mail (shredded confidential waste works too)
• Cardboard tubes
• Sawdust
• Woody prunings
• Bedding (hay, straw, etc) from vegetarian pets (rabbits, guinea pigs, etc)
• Hedge clippings
• Wood shavings
• Fallen leaves

Other items that can be turned into compost:

• Egg shells
• Wood ash (in moderation)
• Hair and nail clippings
• Natural fibers (100% wool or 100% cotton)

Items that shouldn’t be in compost:

• Fish
• Meat
• Cat litter
• Cooked food
• Dog feces
• Coal ash

How do I make compost?

Compost is a very easy thing to make although many believe the process is complicated. All you really need to do is add the items that are mentioned above to your compost pile whenever you feel like it. All of it will eventually turn to compost even though some of it may take a long time. If the mix is unbalanced, the end product may not be very good. If you pay extra attention to the process you can improve the quality of your compost by a lot. To make good compost, you need as close to an equal amount of greens and browns by volume. Also, include small amounts of the ‘other ingredients’ found in the above section.

You can go with two different methods of making compost, the hot heap or cold heap. The hot heap produces more compost in a shorter amount of time, but requires more effort put into the process.

When is my compost ready?

Compost can be made in as little as six to eight weeks. Usually though, it takes a year or longer. A general guide is the more effort put into producing the compost, the quicker you get the compost.

You’ll know when your compost is ready when the materials in the compost bin have turned into a dark brown, earthy smelling material. Try and leave it for another month or two to make sure the compost has fully matured. If the compost isn’t fine and crumbly, don’t worry. It can still be lumpy, sticky, or stringy with bits of eggshells and twig in it, and still be usable. Sieve the material if you’d like and put any large bits back into the compost heap for a later time.

Compost doesn’t only provide great nutrition to your plants, but it also holds water in the soil so that your plants are always properly hydrated. Compost also assists with soil drainage which helps prevent rot and depletion of nutrients in poorer soils. Another great feature of compost is that many components may bind to toxic chemicals, which prevents these chemicals from entering your plants.

You can purchase compost at any gardening store or major hardware chain, such as Lowe’s or Home Depot. It’s also very easy to make your own compost at home by using things that would usually be thrown away.

Learn how to make compost.

Here are some other benefits of purchasing or creating your own compost for use in your garden:

• Making it is cheap or free
• Helps retain soil water
• Improved soils texture, structure, and aeration
• Stimulates healthier roots
• Improves soil and plants
• Great way to dispose of leaves, organic debris, grass clippings, food waste, etc
• Helps the environment
• Increases a gardens yield