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.