How To Tips For Strawberry Plant Care - Our family loves strawberries and I think we eat our weight in strawberries each year.
Okay I may have stretched the truth a bit there but we eat all we can while they are fresh. This year we would like to can some strawberries along with rhubarb for some mid-winter pies.
In order to can some strawberries we will have to start a new patch in our home garden, maybe even double of what we have now.
The Best Way To Plant Strawberry Plants
When planting your strawberries from their original pots they need to be planted to the correct depth or you could cause your strawberry plant to dry up before it takes root or rot from being to deep in the ground. The best guide is to plant them at the same depth as they are in their original pot.
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When you look at your strawberry plant, once it out of the dirt, you will see a definite line where the plant was in the dirt from the pot. That’s going to tell you exactly how deep to plant it.
Meeting The Needs Of Your Strawberry Plants
Strawberries like well drained soil but at the same time they like lots of water. Having soil that drains well will prevent water staying around the roots and drowning your plants. This will also assist in fending off diseases brought on by too much water.
As the strawberry’s roots get stronger you will need less water but once they start to produce strawberries you will need to increase the amount of water to get nice plump strawberries. Too little water is going to force the strawberries to be smaller and may even be dry.
First Season With Strawberries
We found this hard to do but it made for healthier strawberry plants. We pinched off any flowers the first year so that no strawberries formed. Instead all that energy went into making strong healthy plant and roots.
I would have to say it worked great as we had so many strawberries and they tasted like the strawberries we used have at home when I was just a little guy.
We use compost to feed our plants, strawberries included and seldom ever feed them anything else. We did learn that you could use tomato feeder if they need some help, just be sure to use it diluted, they like the potassium.
Out Of Control Strawberry Runners
Our first strawberry plant was in a small pot we purchased at our local nursery. We moved it to a bigger pot when it quickly out grew the small one. Once I saw the runners started I decided I better get it in the ground. So we planted it in one of your raised beds.
Each node is actually a strawberry plant. So we just put dirt around each node, without covering the node and had a new plant started.
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Once we had all the plants we wanted we started cutting the new runners to keep the rest of the plants strong and healthy.
Like I said we snipped off any blossoms for that first year and in no time it had grown to fill the 4×10 footy raised bed.
Mulching Your Strawberries
Once you are happy with the number of strawberry plants you can start trimming runners to keep the main plants healthy. Then place mulch around the plants, without covering them. Make sure all the soil is covered so that the soil won’t heat up so much in the hot sun.
We are going to plant more strawberries for canning but we won’t get any strawberries this year so we are thinking about u-pick strawberries in our local area. I remember as a kid we would go to strawberry u-pick farms. We could eat all we wanted but we still had to pick enough to take home.
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