Uum, Uum Good! Home-grown Strawberries

There's nothing quite like biting into a luscious, red strawberry right from the berry stand -- except for possibly biting into a luscious, red strawberry just picked from your own backyard. Strawberries are nature's most perfect dessert -- sweet, tender, juicy -- and more so when freshly picked.

And you can do it, too. Thanks to our near-perfect weather in most parts of California, particularly along the coast, strawberries are among the easiest crops to grow. Strawberries are so versatile that you can plant them in the ground like the commercial growers do, or even in strawberry jars or hanging baskets. You don't need a "back 40" to grow them.

To grow strawberries in the ground, prepare your soil as you would most edible crops. Add plenty of organic mater, garden compost, peat moss, etc. If you want to grow strawberries like the farmers, heap the soil into raised rows at least eight inches high and 20 to 30 inches wide. Set plants out in a diamond pattern, spacing them 12 to 18 inches apart in the soil with their roots spread out and down, and their crowns just above ground level. You can water by flooding the rows the old-fashioned way, use a soaker hose, drip irrigation or even overhead water.

Grown in good, disease-free soil, strawberries can live and bear fruit for five years or longer. The nice thing about strawberry plants is that they keep producing "runners." You have a constant supply of new plants during the growing season. It should be noted that commercial growers replace plants every year or so for the highest yields, but us home gardeners don't and can't afford to do that.

I'm sure you've seen strawberry jars at nurseries. They are usually terra cotta pots with little pockets protruding frm the container's sides. You can plant the top with two or three plants, and fill each pocket with a single plant.

Hanging wire containers made of sphagnum moss or cocoanut fiber will usually draw raves to visitors to your garden. Who can't resist a basket, brimming with lush green leaves and delicious strawberries? Sixteen-inch wire baskets will use around 24 plants -- 16 inserted into the basket's sides and six more at top.

When planting strawberries in containers, be aware they'll need more water and fertilizer than in-ground plantings. You'll need to water every day in hot weather and fertilize monthly with a liquid fertilizer. Protect fruit from birds with netting. Birds have the uncanny ability to find ripe fruit before gardeners do. And don't you just hate it when birds take one peck out of a berry and leave the rest to rot?

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic