Growing Strawberries
Strawberries are hands down one of my families favorite things to grow in our garden.
I have received hundreds and hundreds of emails in regards to growing strawberries and they all root from this one post:
Follow This One Tip In Your Garden and Get a Ton of Organic Strawberries.
Have you seen this post? It is my most popular post to date (with over 1 million views) and it really has some great information in it.
But today, I wanted to take the task of growing strawberries one step further, or should I say 3 steps further!
Don’t Make These 3 Common Mistakes When Growing Strawberries!
There are 3 critical mistakes that many gardeners make when growing strawberries. Let’s take a look at these shall we?
1. Removing Runners!
I talk about the importance of removing runners in my article Follow This One Tip In Your Garden and Get a Ton of Organic Strawberries.
So I am not going to get into the nitty-gritty here, but do know that the central plant (or the mother plant) creates runners which then will create daughter plants.
Here is what a daughter plant looks like.
Energy is taken from the mother plant to produce these daughter plants and this will in turn produce fewer strawberries.
This is why you want to remove the runners. Do note that you can successfully have 3 daughter plants to 1 mother without affecting the productivity of the plant.
2. Don’t Bury The Crown!
Crown?? What is a crown you ask? Good question. Let’s take a closer look at the picture I posted at the top of this post.
The crown is the base of the plant as shown in this picture. It is very important to leave some of the plant (or the crown) exposed out of the soil.
If you cover the crown, the plant will eventually rot and will die. So do pay close attention when planting your strawberry plant, and be sure to check out the video from Bonnie Plants below to get a good visual on how this is done.
3. Mulch, Mulch, Mulch!
Finally, it is super important to mulch around the strawberry plant. Do not miss this critical step. Strawberries like moist soil and mulching protect the plants roots and creates a super healthy plant.
An important thing to remember is that different mulches may work better in your area. For example, I live in the deep south now and we have slugs and slugs are attracted to straw, so that might not be the best fit for me.
I might use mulch like this (pictured below) or you can also use broken up leaves for thick coverage.
How To Video — Planting and Growing Strawberries
So here is a terrific video from Bonnie Plants showing you just how easy it is to grow strawberries!
I’ve been having one issue on every attempt I’ve made to grow strawberries! I get holes in the fruit. An insect or bird makes a hole, sometimes it looks like a bite, out of almost each berry that grows. I’ve never seen any insects around them, apart from the occasional ant. I’ve planted them in a pot to keep them off the ground; same result. I’ve mulched, I’ve not mulched. I’m currently using pine needles and leaves as mulch, after a hopeful first few weeks, suddenly the holes were back! What on earth is causing this and how can I avoid it? I live in Alberta, Canada, zone 3.
I’m not sure about the perpetrator, but try sprinkling powdered cayenne pepper around the plants. I find that it repels a lot of animal and insect pests.
it may be bunnies. Also I leave my dogs poop (in a bag) around my garden and that seems to help, gross, I know…
When seeing the daughter plants, should you plant it in soil to root before cutting it away from the mother plant?
If you are wanting to plant them right next to the mother, then yes…root them in the soil. If you want them in another spot, I’d cut from the mother and place into some soil where you want them to grow.
My yard is done in rock for decoration, how would i go about making a successful strawberry garden with rock instead of mulch?
I planted strawberries past summer and although to my joy they sprouted and gave out little shoots but after the first true leaves they have not grown at all I water them put coffee grounds as well but nope not growing can u tell me why. I live in LA,CA
How deep does soil have to be for strawberries. I want to make a strawberry bed on top of my chicken coop.
Thank you so much.
My strawberry plants look beautiful and have lots of blossoms, but the strawberries are super tiny. This is the second year this has happened and I can’t understand why they are so tiny. I have mason bees close by and had lots of honey bees in our orchard, which is also close by. The strawberries are planted in a raised bed with good soil. The ph is in the range that strawberries prefer. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thank you!
Why does my plant look like twigs sprotting out i do see pink white fur like in the middle did i plant backwards?
Goddamn it!!
It seems like the author isn’t replying anymore but I’ll ask anyway…. What about roots you buy from the store? The package said bury the whole thing, so I did. Did I do this wrong?