Strawberries are a flexible little fruit. From cereal/salad topper to smoothie flavoring to tart pastry filling, this is often a fruit you’ll incorporate into breakfast, lunch, dinner, beverage, or dessert. additionally to packing a bounty of vitamin C, you’ll also get 5% or more of your daily nutritional value of manganese, fiber, iodine, folate, copper, potassium, and biotin from only one cup of strawberries.
Strawberries are generally a simple crop to grow, but gardeners are always trying to find bigger berries and a bigger harvest. Compare your growing technique to those tips. What tips does one need to share?
1. CHOOSE YOUR STRAWBERRY PLANT WISELY
Did you recognize that there are many strawberry varieties? Everbearing strawberries produce two harvests per year: one within the spring and one in late summer. These strawberries are best planted in hills or areas with limited space since they spend more energy-producing than expanding outward.
June-bearing strawberry plants are the foremost popular and customary variety. These varieties rarely produce within the first year, so don’t be discouraged. once they do grow, they yield large strawberries over 3-4 weeks in June. But even this sort of plant is further classified into Early Season, Midseason, and Late Season. Plant classification is vital to know if you would like to urge the foremost berries from your plant.
Unlike June-bearing strawberries, day-neutral varieties will produce fruit within the first year. These berries are much smaller, averaging only about one inch. However, these plants are ready to produce berries year-round when grown in temperatures between 35-85 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. OPTIMAL SOIL CONDITIONS FOR STRAWBERRIES
Now that you simply know the various plant varieties, let’s mention optimal soil conditions. Strawberries work great in raised beds thanks to drainage, but not in soil that previously housed plants that strawberries dislike: tomato, potato, pepper, and eggplant. For best results, amend your soil with compost or aged manure and use alfalfa meal fertilizer.
3. PROTECTING STRAWBERRY PLANTS FROM PESTS
Snails, slugs, earwigs, and sowbugs like to snack on strawberry plants. the simplest thanks to protecting your plants is to hide the soil with a porous weed block material. Note that if you have already got a pest problem, you ought to skip organic mulch since it will only attract these nuisances. Otherwise, straw is an efficient mulch.
4. WATERING YOUR STRAWBERRY PLANTS
The ideal method for watering strawberries is drip irrigation. This helps to stay water faraway from the fruit to scale back fruit rot. Because strawberries have shallow roots and therefore the surface of the soil can dry out rather quickly in some areas, the soil must be kept moist (not soggy) during the whole season. The optimal soil saturation is 1 inch.
5. REMOVE THE RUNNERS
As painful as this might be, you want to remove the runners. These are the long stems that come off of the most plant and make more strawberry plants. Why would you reduce your harvest during this manner? Because runners compete together with your main plant for nutrients and your strawberry yield and size will suffer.
Test it out for a season and you’ll see the difference between allowing runners to grow or pinching them off at the central plant base. By removing the extra strawberry plants, you’re ensuring that your plant produces more berries at the end of the day.
6. STRAWBERRY PLANT PLACEMENT
Perhaps the foremost often overlooked tip for growing strawberry plants. Strawberries need sun—and many it. The more sun your plants get, the larger the strawberries are going to be. Don’t worry about scorching them unless temperatures reach over 85 degrees Fahrenheit (if so, you’ll want to shade them). Just keep the soil moist and therefore the plants will thrive despite the constant sun. For this reason, strawberries are usually planted in rows, thus allowing the sun to penetrate the whole perimeter of the plant.
