Easy Guide to Planting Strawberries in your Summer Garden
Growing it simply garden series: Strawberries
I believe that gardening should be simple. If you want to learn to plant strawberries in your summer garden in a few easy-to-follow steps, then this is your guide! Before I plant something new in my garden, I research what I need to know, and I am always attracted to easy-to-follow instructions, so here goes!
photo cred: theseedcollection.com
This will be our fourth year of our home strawberry patch and they have been SO plentiful over the years. It is a dream to have my girls out with me picking strawberries every couple of days in June, and for them to have their neighbor friends over to play, picking berries and washing them off with the hose to eat. We just love growing strawberries here!
The best time to plant strawberries is in the spring, you can plant them as early as several weeks before the last frost date.
To get started you will want to choose a location with full sun to plant your strawberry plants. Here is a link to affordable planters we made for our strawberry patch. It is nice to have defined lines for your patch because strawberries will keep putting out runners everywhere so this keeps them confined to this space.
Next, you will want to break up the soil with a shovel, digging a foot or so down and turning it over to loosen it up for plants to easily grow and take root. My favorite soil to add to all my gardening is Miracle Grow Garden mix. (I have run out and used potting soil in other years and my miracle grow plants were literally doubled in size and in fruit to the potting soil plants!) Add in a bag and continue to turn over the soil to mix. Then smooth out the soils surface.
Next, plant strawberry plants 12-18 inches apart. You want to buy the real, potted strawberry plant starts. This will get you off to the best start! You can plant them and let them fill up a whole garden plot with their runners, or plant in rows so you can walk between them. Also optional, (I wish that I had done this) you can put down weed paper in between the rows so your plants only fill into those rows. Plant your strawberry plant just high enough so that the crown is not covered with soil.
Strawberries need 1 to 1.5 inches of rain each week so water once or twice per week in the beginning depending on that week’s rain. Water daily or every other day when plants are growing fruit to get bigger sized and juicy berries.
The first year you may only get a few berries, that’s okay! Enjoy them and look forward to years 2 and beyond when you will be bursting with berries!
In the fall, cover your strawberry patch with leaves or much to protect the plants over winter.
Every four to five years, clear a quarter to a half of your established strawberry plants out in the fall or early spring. Then let your plants shoot out new runners to the cleared side over the summer season. Old Strawberry plants don’t produce much fruit and this will keep your patch fresh with berries continually.
This covers the basics of planting a strawberry patch. Let me know how yours turns out. I hope that you enjoy plenty of berries in the years to come!