Tips for Growing Strawberries

No store or market-bought strawberries can ever compare, in flavor, to those that are picked fresh and eaten on the spot. Fortunately, strawberries are not all that difficult to grow. Whether we choose summer-fruiting cultivars like "Cambridge Favorite", "Elsanta", "Elvira" and "Gorella", or perpetual (meaning they produce one crop in summer and another in late summer/early autumn) varieties like "Calypso" and "Aromel", we have a fair chance of success, provided that we find a sunny site with fertile and well-drained soil.

The site you choose should be exposed to sunlight for a good portion of the day. Make sure that no nearby trees will be casting significant shade. Strawberries can take up a lot of space in garden beds, but they can be successfully cultivated in pots or in container towers. Various containers - even specific strawberry pots - are available at nurseries and garden supply stores. If you choose to cultivate them in garden rows, turn the soil like you would before planting any other type of fruit or vegetable and enrich it with compost or manure. Strawberries grow in most types of soil - they are less particular than other berries - but they do best in ground that is slightly acidic and sandy with organic matter mixed in.

After sprouting your seedlings indoors, set the strawberry plants outdoors in late summer or early autumn. Maintain a space of 15 inches between each plant, and 30 inches between rows. They will begin to bear fruit within a year; at this time, keep the fruit off the ground by placing clean straw under the leaves and fruiting stems. Keep the area well watered if there's little rain.

If strawberries are planted through a sheet of black plastic, the covering will keep their soil warm and moist. First create a slight hump in the center of your planting area so that rainwater will drain away from the plants. Water this plot until it's well damp, cover it with the plastic, and bury the edges of the sheet with soil. Then make X-shaped incisions in the plastic and plant your strawberries through these holes.

Birds enjoy strawberries as much as we do, so to insure that there's enough left for you to eat you should put some kind of barrier over your plants. Pre-made fruit cages can be expensive, but they provide the most convenient protection and cover the complete area. Tunnels of wire netting work well in shielding low-growing strawberries from unwanted predators, also.

Bear in mind that strawberry plants generally produce fruit for only three years, so you will need to periodically renew your crop - ideally, a third of the plants each year. Also, the replacement plants will need to be put in fresh soil (i.e., in a different part of the garden).

Extensive pruning is not necessary, but you should remove old leaves and the straw mulch, after picking your harvest, to rid the area of possible pests and diseases. Some critters that are known to plague strawberry plants include eelworms, strawberry beetles, red spider mites, slugs and snails.