Want to know how to grow strawberries? Think you have two
brown thumbs and couldn’t grow dandelions in your yard if you tried?
Then I have good news for you! Growing strawberries is one
of the easiest achievements anybody – even a child with no other gardening
experience – can make.
Here are the steps.
How to grow strawberries
- Prepare a garden in an area of your yard that gets sun at least six hours a day. Buy however many six-packs of strawberries you want (one flat would do; I think you can put six six-packs in a flat) from your local nursery, garden center, or favorite online nursery (we love Raintree Nursery).
- Dig one small hole for every two square feet, just deep enough to put the strawberry plant roots down in, and about as wide as the plant.
- Put some compost tea or dry plant nourishment like Garden Tone in the bottom of the hole.
- Set a strawberry plant in each hole, covering up the roots.
- When you’re done planting all you’re going to plant for that session, water each plant well.
- Mulch each plant well with hay, crushed dried leaves, or wood chips.
- If you think of it, fertilize them with compost tea once a season.
- If it doesn’t rain for two to four weeks, depending on how hot it is, water them.
- Weed as necessary.
They are a high-nutrient, low-calorie, taste-bud tantalizing
treat that are not only low-maintenance, but are also perennials that are very
easily propagated.
How to propagate strawberries
When they start spreading in the fall – they send out new
shoots in every direction, which root where they lie – cut off and dig up the
new shoots and plant them somewhere else.
Done! Strawberry plants are so non-picky that you don’t have
to worry about damaging roots during this process. They’ll grow, anyway.
Every couple of years, you may want to pull out the two-year old plants, as some gardeners believe that the older plants don't produce as well.
How do my strawberries grow?
The first year, your strawberry patch will look like this
(hopefully, without all the grass):
This is actually the new patch I created when I propagated a
small fraction of the many new strawberry plants that had grown by last fall in my original patch, about 60 square feet:
This next photo shows how the strawberries are trying to
take over the path. Most of the plants in the new patch came out of this area
in the garden path:
Look at all the blossoms we have!
And since we’ve had a relatively warm spring, we have a lot
of actually fruit growing already, too.
Once we get the mini-orchard established over and around our
earth-sheltered house, I’m going to plant strawberries in front of the other
berry bushes, such as the goji and blueberry. The orchard is going to be caged
in to keep birds, squirrels, mice and other critters from getting tempted to
eat our food, so the strawberries there will be protected.
