How to Plant and Grow Your Own Organic Strawberries

Grow Your Own Strawberries

Strawberry plants are beautiful and overall super easy to grow. They're hardy little perennials from the Rosaceae family, the same plant family that gives us rose bushes, blackberries, and raspberries.

It might go without saying that homegrown strawberries are so much tastier than the berries you buy from the grocery store. Here's all you need to know to get set up and growing with your own little strawberry patch or container garden.

Strawberry Season

Strawberries are perennial plants that are typically planted in early spring or early fall. If you live in a warmer climate, you might plant strawberries between January and April, and for those of you in a colder climate, your best planting window is about February to April. The trick is to plant them in cool weather but not so soon that they'll begin to bloom before you're out of the woods for hard frosts, which can damage the delicate little flowers.

Strawberries are cold-hardy plants, but they do need some time to develop strong roots before winter if you're planting them in the fall. As soon as the ground thaws, strawberries will begin producing new stems.

Strawberries typically produce their little fruits in late spring or early summer. They'll stop or pause their fruit production once the temperature grows too warm, depending on which type you're growing.

Where to Grow Strawberries

You can grow strawberries in the ground in a traditional row-garden fashion, or you can plant them on the edges of raised beds or containers. I love the look of strawberry leaves and runners cascading over the side of a raised garden bed.

The two most important considerations when picking a spot are sunlight and drainage. Select a spot that gets at least 6 hours of sunlight, though 8 to 10 hours is even better. Making sure your strawberries get as much sun as possible not only ensures you actually get fruit, it also makes your fruits taste all the sweeter. If you live somewhere with hot summers, try to give your strawberries some afternoon shade.

You also want your soil to drain well.

Growing strawberries in the ground

Amend your native soil before planting strawberries in the ground. If you live somewhere with clay-heavy soil, I recommend digging up the top couple inches of topsoil before adding compost and mixing in some organic compost and coarse sand to improve drain-ability. Mound topsoil and compost into little hills spaced 1 foot apart. You'll plant one strawberry plant in each mound.

It's never great to have plant parts touching the ground, especially if they're juicy little berries trying to ripen. So I recommend grabbing a couple packs of plastic strawberry supports to go around your plants and hold the leaves and fruits off the ground.

Make sure to keep the area weed-free.

Growing strawberries in a raised-bed garden or container

If you plant right along the edge of your raised bed or container, you can plant your strawberries right next to other smaller plants like herbs and flowers. The leaves, runners, and fruits will be able to dangle over the side of the bed. (Prune runners that head toward the interior of the bed so that your plants don't get too cramped.)

If you want to grow strawberries in their own container, you could always grab a multiple-tiered strawberry pot made of terra cotta or plastic. You can grow one plant per little opening in the special pot.

Strawberry Varieties

There are two basic types of strawberry plants: June-bearing and ever-bearing, also called day neutral strawberries.

June-bearing strawberries produce one crop per year, beginning the year after planting. Your production will be similar to that of bush tomatoes in that you'll get almost all of your fruit at once.

Ever-bearing strawberries produce the first season they're planted and then often go on to produce a second but smaller round of berries for harvest in late summer or early fall.

You might have heard of wild strawberries or woodland strawberries before. These are both common names for alpine strawberries, a type of ever-bearing plant. This is the most popular type to grow from seed since most of our other favorites are hybrids, meaning seeds won't produce plants that are true to their parents.

Alpine strawberries don't produce runners like other types (I'll talk more about runners in a bit), which makes them good for growing as ground cover in flower beds and in containers. You can find seed packs for alpine strawberries that are yellow, red, or cream-colored. Just keep in mind the fruits will be itty bitty (these are not the 3-inch monsters you see at the grocery store!), but your plants should keep producing throughout the warmer months.

How to Grow Strawberries from Seed

Growing your own alpine strawberries from seed is a great way to end up with lots of strawberry plants for a fraction of the cost of hybrids from your local nursery. You can start strawberries indoors about 8 weeks before your last frost date in the spring or direct sow them once all threat of frost has passed. Keep your fingers crossed, and you should have fruit by summertime!

Follow these steps to start strawberry seeds indoors:

• Grab a seed-starting flat with drainage holes and then a tray without drainage holes to set your flat inside. Fill the flat with re-hydrated organic seed starting mix.
• Strawberry seeds are tiny, so you're just going to lightly broadcast them over the mix. Then sprinkle some more seed starting mix over them. Strawberry seeds like a little light on their seed coats in order to germinate, so just cover them enough so that you no longer see the seeds. Don't bury them.
• Fill the bottom of the non-draining tray with fresh water and set your flat inside it. Water this way from the bottom or use a spray bottle to mist the soil so that it stays moist while you're waiting for the seeds to germinate. Avoid pouring water overhead, which can displace the seeds. Place seeds under a grow light for 12 hours a day.
• Continue providing at least 12 hours of artificial light a day and keeping the soil moist until you see little green sprouts emerge, which can take anywhere from 14 to 45 days.
• Once your strawberry seedlings have grown several sets of leaves, begin the process of hardening them off, or gradually getting them used to outdoor conditions. Let them sit outside in a shaded area for longer periods of time each day for an entire week, until moving them to their new home in your kitchen garden.

How to Plant Strawberries

If you'd like to grow a hybrid strawberry variety, you'll start your plants by bare roots or by runners clipped from a healthy plant. Your local nursery might also have non-dormant plants for sale in the spring (that means you'll actually see the leaves instead of feeling like you're buying something that's already dead).

Add some organic compost to the top of your raised bed or container or amend your native soil before planting. If you'd like to give your plants a nutritional boost, you could add some bonemeal to the bottom of each planting hole.

How to Plant Bare Root Strawberries

The first time I ordered bare roots online, I really thought I'd been sent dead plants and was pleasantly surprised when green leaves actually appeared. You'll soak the roots for about 4 to 6 hours before planting to make sure they're nice and hydrated. Keep the bowl somewhere dark and cool. Immediately before planting, separate each ugly little brown thing from the bunch.

Use a dibber to make nice, wide holes in your soil for each root. Remember, give strawberries 1 square foot of growing space in the ground. In a raised bed or container, you can space them every 6 inches or so. Bury each root about halfway up the crown (the thick band between the roots and top). Backfill each hole with soil and give your strawberries a nice watering in.

The Best Companion Plant for Strawberries

Here's my "hack" for keeping your strawberries pest free: Plant onion bulbs right in between each and every strawberry plant. I started doing this in my clients' gardens, and their leaves are beautiful and so healthy looking every time I visit them, even during the height of pest season.

Onions aren't magical pest deterrents, but they do release a scent that repels many of the pests that are most drawn to strawberries. Bonus: Once your strawberries are ready for harvest, you get onions, too!

If you don't want to grow large bulbs, you could plant spring onions or chives.

How to Care for Strawberry Plants

Follow these tips to keep your strawberries happy.

Watering Strawberries

Give your plants a good inch of water every week. If Mother Nature doesn't cover your watering duties with rain, add more water by hand or consider installing an easy automated irrigation system to deliver the most consistent water to your berries. An overall rule of thumb is to water when the top inch of the soil feels dry.

When you're watering, make sure to aim your water at the roots of the plant, not the leaves. This will help avoid certain leaf spot diseases.

Pruning Strawberries

Pruning can help you direct your strawberry plant's energy. Some strawberry plants produce a lot of runners, or stems that extend from the main plant that have the ability to become new plants. Pinching these runners off will tell the plant to focus on ripening a few larger fruits. Keeping the runners will result in more fruits, but they'll be smaller.

If you prune the runners, you can plant them in a pot and encourage them to form a new root and plant system. Just pin the base down into the soil, leaves facing up. Roots should form where the stem makes good soil contact. Now you have new strawberry plants!

If you notice any discolored or pest-affected leaves, go ahead and prune those, as well.

Fertilizing Strawberries

Avoid applying nitrogen-rich fertilizers to the growing space. Besides some bonemeal at the time of planting and some fresh compost every couple of months, I typically don't give my strawberries additional nutrients. You can fertilize your plants after harvest time to give next year's fruits a bump.

Protecting Strawberries from Pests

In addition to planting a member of the onion family near your strawberry plants, you'll also want to check your plants for slugs and snails. Hand remove any pests you find on the leaves. If your slug problem grows out of hand, you can use organic Sluggo. To prevent larger pests like birds from stealing fruits as they ripen on the plant, try wrapping them in little organza bags, like the kind you'd store jewelry in. You can buy large packs for cheap online.

My Top Tip for Increasing Your Strawberry Yield

It may sound counterintuitive, but you actually don't want your strawberry plants to produce a lot of fruit during their first year in the garden. Instead, you want these perennials to settle in and establish their roots so that they can produce lots of fruit next year. So with that in mind, pinch off some of the strawberry flowers you see your first year for best results.

Waste not, want not—those delicate little flowers are 100 percent edible. It'd be nice if they tasted like strawberries, but the flowers are a little more on the bitter side. They make excellent garnishes for desserts, especially the pink flowers from hybrid plants.

If your plant is producing a ton of runners in its first year, it's also a good idea to prune them. Again, that'll encourage the plant to focus on getting established.

Note: If your plants have been growing for 3 to 4 years and you notice a decline in fruit production, that's your sign that their time in your garden is coming to an end. Replace them with fresh plants that will give you better production and keep your garden healthy.

When to Harvest Strawberries

Strawberries get their pretty red color from anthocyanin, a flavonoid that's been found to reduce risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure, and more in recent studies. Anthocyanin only forms once sugars build up at the end of the ripening process. That makes it nice and easy to tell when a strawberry is ready to be picked.

Wait for your little fruits to turn red, and then give them a tug. If they pull away easily, they're ready to harvest. If the plant doesn't seem ready to let them go, give them another day or two.

You can typically expect to get about 5 to 7 fruits per strawberry plant.

It's best to wait to wash your strawberries until just before you're ready to enjoy them. That helps them stay fresh longer.

Time to Grow Your Own Strawberries

Once you've planted your strawberries and made some pruning decisions, these plants are pretty easy to care for. I've seen strawberry plants in a neglected raised bed come back after winter and turn into a little strawberry patch all on their own. Whatever labor you put into your own patch will be rewarded with the sweetest fruits of your success.

Thanks for being here and helping to make gardening ordinary again!