Crop Guide: Growing Strawberries
Strawberry plants are a perennial , creeping member of the rose family. The plant forms crowns which grow leaves, set flowers then fruit in late spring to mid summer. Then in late summer through to autumn, they send out runners (called stolons) on which plantlets develop, which then send out roots and develop into a new strawberry plant. Over time the crowns will also multiply. If left to their own devices in the same bed year after year, the plants will become overcrowded and likely to get diseased, and the fruit will be small.
To get the best from your plants, with plenty of large, delicious fruit, some timely work each autumn around May but as late as July will pay dividends. To form a good strawberry bed, mound the soil. Strawberry plants hate getting wet feet ie sitting in sodden poorly drained soil. Double digging the bed, adding plenty of compost and raking the bed up even higher, will result in healthy, happy plants. The plants will be in the same bed for two years, so don’t be mean! Rake the bed flat at the top to make a plateau about 60 cm wide. This is where you will plant two staggered rows of strawberry plants, about 30 cm apart on the diagonal, just in from the edge where the bed slopes down.
If you can, set some irrigation tape along each row of plants so it is in place for the summer.
Next is to mulch the beds deeply to keep weeds at bay, keep the soil moist in dry weather and feed the soil over time. Woody mulch is fine, it will last much better than green/grassy mulch. Incorporating pine needles is great, they somehow seem to make the strawberries taste even better!
As the plants settle in, they will start to form flowers. Check the plants weekly and remove all flowers (yes I know this is hard) right through to the end of August. This will allow the plant to focus all its energy on forming a robust, leafy strong plant which will be able to support a lot more fruit at the time when they will actually ripen and taste good.
Come spring you will need to protect the fruit that will develop from birds and slugs.
If you can, resist picking the fruit til they are fully coloured. The flavour is incomparable!
Over summer keep the plants watered but avoid watering the fruit and leaves. The humidity can cause diseases like grey mould aka botrytis.
By the end of the season the plants will look a little tired. Some of the leaves will be diseased. Remove tired/diseased leaves and give the plants a liquid feed of fish and seaweed. Let the runners develop and harvest the plantlets and pot them up for making your second bed in autumn.
From now on you will have two beds of strawberries: First season plants and second season plants. The plants that go into their second fruiting season will be a lot larger than the new plants and will produce a lot more fruit.
Remove the second season plants when they are done fruiting. I know- it’s hard. But they really won’t be much good a third time round. Make yourself a fresh strawberry bed and plant the old finished bed with a green manure to feed the soil and give it a rest before cropping again with something else.
