Growing your own Strawberries

One of my favorite Beatles songs is Strawberry Fields. It brings to mind vast acres of strawberries, bursting with juicy ripe red fruits just waiting to be picked and eaten. Then there's the strawberry shortcakes, the strawberry jams and the strawberries we can and freeze for later use as well. When I was younger, my mother would take us to a pick your own place in town and we'd spend a couple of hours there picking our strawberries, looking for the biggest and reddest ones. We'd leave a short time later with red stained hands and mouths, and quarts and quarts of strawberries. I'm not sure how big that field was, but as a child, it seemed to stretch on forever, and the strawberries seemed never ending.

I would absolutely love to have acres of strawberry plants. I would love, in the middle of town to have a pick -your-own where kids and their parents could visit and leave with yummy ripe organic strawberries that I've grown, but alas, I don't have that option, at least not until Hubby lets me dig up the entire side yard. For now,I have to settle for the 50 strawberry plants that I purchased from a nursery.

There are two types of strawberries. Everbearing (like Fort Laramies and Ozark Beauties) and then Junebearers (like Chandler and Honeoye). The difference between the two is simple. The everbearing start producing fruit on 10 hours of light a day and the Junebearers produce fruit only when there is 14+ hours of sunlight a day. With everbearing, you'll get a slow steady crop of fruit, and with Junebearers you'll get a large harvest all at once. I chose the everbearing for two reasons. Number one, I have four kids. Finding time to harvest and then process all those strawberries within a couple of weeks during the summer is going to be tough. With everbearing I can pick as they come ripe, and what we don't eat can be jammed and canned a couple of jars at a time. Secondly, my children, save the oldest, absolutely love strawberries and the idea of having strawberries in their own yard all summer long has them more excited than I've seen in a  long time.

Strawberries will come as dormant roots from the nursery, if you order online, or you can pick up some plants at your local nursery that you'll need to plant quite soon unless you have a green house or a growlight set up in your house or another place that doesn't get too cold. I ordered dormant plants because our weather has been insane lately (its May 1, and it's snowing and 32º. REALLY). And because I could get a bundle of 25 a bit cheaper than in my local nursery.

If you do order online, you'll want to make sure to keep the roots in a place that doesn't get too warm, but that doesn't get too cold either. A garage ( that doesn't get below freezing) or a basement are two great places.

When you bring the roots out to plant, you'll need to prepare the soil accordingly. Having a slightly acidic  pH is essential (about 6.0 - 6.2) and make sure the site is free of weed and that veggies and fruits like eggplant tomatoes and peppers and the like or raspberries have grown before. These veggies/fruits could have contaminated the soil with verticillium wilt. The Hill System is the most common system used for everbearing plants and is what we will be using in our garden. You'll start with a hill of soil about 8 inches high off the ground and about 24 inches across. We have our hills to be about 20-25 feet long in our garden. You can set two rows of plants per hill and have each plant about 12 inches from other plants. Rows are around 4 ft apart usually but we practice intense gardening therefore, we will have a 2 ft walkway between each row. You'll also need to make sure you pay attention to your weather pattern, as you don't want freezing weather with your roots, but you want your plants well established in the garden before it gets too hot.

Using the picture above as a guide, you can simply place your roots in the ground making sure to create a small hill of soil in the hole you dig for the roots to spread out on. Fill the hole with dirt ensuring proper root placement and then press firmly on the soil and water thoroughly.

Now, strawberry plants will produce runners just like blackberries and the like. You can train the runners where you like or let them have free reign, but no more than 5 plants per square foot is essential for the healthiest plants. With everbearing plants, you should remove all runners and blossoms until July 1 to ensure healthy plants.

The great thing about strawberries? You plant once and enjoy them year after year. However, this means when winter comes, you'll need to ensure proper care of the plants so they don't die. In colder climates, you'll need to wait until the plants go dormant, which is usually around December when the temps drop into the teens or twenties and then mulch the plants with 2-3 inches of organic material like straw (not hay!) or pine needles. When spring comes, you simply need to make sure you cover the plants if a frost or freeze is expected. That second spring you should have great yields, which I hope you will enjoy!