Strawberries are probably the best fruit ever (besides peaches)! And the taste of home grown strawberries is so much more flavorful than those bought from the store. You should certainly start growing your own.
Believe it or not, strawberries are pretty easy to grow. They are only demanding in that the plant stay moist. A dry strawberry plant becomes a crunchy strawberry plant, fast. Then it dies, fast. There is little forgiveness once leaves wilt and turn yellow and brown.
FUN FACTS!
During college, in my Fruit and Nut Production class, we took a trip to a local strawberry farm to learn more about how they grew strawberries. Our class even got to try our hands at planting them. That was a fun experience! The farm used mounded rows covered with a moisture retainer. Planting was done by hand with a tractor driven between the rows with a trailer that seated 2 people, staggered. As the tractor drove, a hole was punched in the barrier and you had to quickly drop your plug in. It happened faster than you would have expected, which made sense why the trailer it pulled seated several people offset from each other because if you missed a hole you had one or two backups to fill it.
My Strawberry Growing Experience
Growing strawberries at home in my own small raised bed was simple, but it took a couple years of practice to get it right. My first year (2017) I didn't get my watering just right, and my soil and plants become too dry and they all died before fruiting. That was a bummer but it forced me to do more research on growing strawberries.
My second year (2018) was more successful. After reading more in my book
Texas Fruit & Vegetable Gardening by Greg Grant I had a better idea of what to do. I went to several local garden centers in the early spring, February to early March is when the strawberry plants are available, searching for the varieties I found in my book. I found none of them! I found varieties I tried the previous year but decided to try a different variety my second year, Allstar. I purchased the plants from Lowe's of all places. I bought 6 plants to fit one of my 6' x 3' raised beds.
Once I was ready to plant I knew a few things to do differently this time:
Don't plant the plant too deep below the crown! In fact, its better to have the crown slightly above the soil line, and you can push soil up just below the crown.
Make sure your soil is a well draining soil! I purchased a premium garden soil that retains moisture but drains well too. The last thing you want is a soil that retains too much water and becomes too waterlogged for your strawberries
Keep the crowns moist! In the spring that meant I would set my drip system to water daily for about 10 minutes a day. You can use inline drip tubing (it has the emitter every 12:" usually) or sprays. I chose to use sprays this time.
Mulch your bed! Keep the soil cool and help retain moisture. I used cedar mulch. This made it where I didn't have to water more than the other beds I had planted. In fact, if the other beds were getting too much water I simply turned the value to reduce the water flow. Mulch also helps keep the soil warm in winter!
With those simple adjustments, my second year of strawberry growing was successful in that I had a few berries and my plants survived. I'll take it!
ONLINE RESOURCES FOR PLANTING STRAWBERRIES IN CENTRAL TEXAS:
Strawberries are cool season plants, meaning they don't die when temperatures get cold, and they produce fruit in the spring. Once the weather starts getting hot (June through September) the plants will stop flowering and start sending out runners. These runners will root on top of the soil and form new plants. Oh, and these runners can have multiple nodes! What? Seriously? Yah, I didn't believe it till I saw it. That meant 1 plant could have 5 runners that had 1-2 nodes each (sometimes more), resulting in 5-10 new plants.
What did I do with this unexpected surprise? I let my 6 plants send out as many runners as possible. By the fall my entire bed had been covered with runners, and new plants had rooted. I was so happy! It was the best looking bed I had in my garden.
But I bet you are saying "those plants won't survive winter." Not true! Remember I mentioned strawberries are cool season plants? So long as the winters aren't too cold, and for Central Texas you aren't in the 20s too long, or too often, the plants will survive no problem. I didn't even use any freeze cloth and our temps stayed in the upper 20s for several hours for a day or two. I did have some cold damage, but only cosmetic. The plants thrived the following Spring.
Types Of Strawberries
Strawberries also come in two types, June bearing - your classic summertime fruit producing varieties, - and ever bearing/day neutral - which don't hold up as well in our Texas heat. The Allstar variety seen growing here is a June bearing type.
Once spring arrived, the plants perked up and you saw new growth starting to form again from the crowns as well as flowers appearing. Where there are flowers, there will be berries!
Starting around April you will start seeing berries. That will increase in mid May. Once the weather starts getting in the 90s the plants slow down producing flowers.
My raised bed FULL of strawberry plants produced enough berries for myself in 2019. The Allstar variety I have did not produce large berries like you see in the grocery store. My berries were generally the size of a quarter, but occasionally you found a bigger one. Small, sweet, delicious fruit, perfect for your home garden.
I had many weekend breakfasts consisting of strawberry and Nutella crepes. I was able to even try my hand at canning this year. While it wasn't much, I was able to get two pints made, but certainly have to keep trying to perfect consistency!
What Things Went Wrong?
I've highlighted on my successes above, but there were plenty of failures as well. Because I let the plants run wild and take over my bed there ended up being a lot of decaying leaves along with the mulch I put down to retain soil moisture.
I picked many a berry this past year that had been munched on by slugs, or stayed too wet too long and rotted. I had enough berries I could pitch them over the fence for the squirrels to eat on and still have plenty for myself.
My assumption was I had poor airflow with that many plants, and I should take more consideration in 2020 to remove some plants to give each plant more room to breathe. This, along with the moist environment, made it a perfect habitat for slugs. It was quite difficult at first to understand what had been eating the berries because I hardly saw the slugs. But one day, I had picked what looked to be a perfect berry, to find out that on the other side a slug had dug in and was having a nice feast.
Starting Over With A New Bed
This fall (2019) I decided I need to move where my strawberries were growing and do a better job of keeping airflow between plants and decaying organic matter cleaned up.
Because the strawberry plants need more water than other beds, and the bed they were in also irrigated my bed along the fence line, they needed a dedicated space.
It is wise to do crop rotation every couple years as different plants will consume different minerals from the soil. The soil in the bed that has become their new home is more dense than my other beds, therefore stays wetter, which I thought could benefit the strawberries, as well as my other beds since all is controlled off the same irrigation timer.
When the runners started to come out in late July I bought some small Terra Cotta pots (as seen in the picture above), placed them in the bed filled with potting soil, and placed nodes on top to start rooting. Once well rooted I could detach from the mother plant, and other nodes.
Next, I took these rooted pots and planted in a new bed. the end of August. Once planted, I made sure to get mulch down fast to keep the soil from drying out because its Texas, and still hot leading into October. Its now mid November and my new plants are still sending out runners, so I will have between 10-15 plants, or more, for spring 2020!
I'm looking forward to what my new crop will do. I certainly have fewer plants than last year, but can't wait to see how this bed with plants less than a year old will perform.
Thank you for reading! I hope you found learning useful. We'd love to hear from you!
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