I love eating strawberries and homegrown ones taste far superior and much fresher than supermarket bought ones. This post is about strawberries how to grow and harvest.
Strawberries are a great summer fruit. All the children love them. They great to eat on its own, use in desserts, jams and preserves. They are used in cocktails or made into ice cream or sorbet. It also can be used in salads or breakfast cereal or pancake to add more flavour.
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How to grow and harvest strawberries
I have grown strawberries from seeds. It’s a much harder way of growing them. The germination of strawberry seeds was erratic it took two packets of seeds to produce about 5-10 plants of alpine strawberries. It is possible to sow the seeds even in autumn but it means having to protect them over the winter.
A much easier way is to buy strawberry bare roots come autumn or early spring. This is young plants grown from older and establish strawberry plants. So once these young roots throw some young plants there is no need to buy any more plants/ roots. Here is a link to a bare root strawberry ‘elegance’ midseason variety.
There are loads of varieties to grow from. It’s about personal preference. Strawberries come in white colour as well which helps to prevent birds from eating them come harvest time. they are just as easy to grow as the red ones. Although the flavour may vary from variety to another.
They do need a sunny spot and well drain manure compost. They are relatively disease-free.
Some gardeners recommend growing them in a red sheet so as to mask the colour of strawberry to prevent predators like birds from eating them. I have yet to try this method out. I think it does work but it’s a matter of getting hold of some plastic red sheets as well. It also helps to dampen down the weeds.
Strawberries can be grown in lots of different places like in hanging baskets, pots, indoors, planters, raised beds or borders. It can grow in between taller plants so as to dampen down the weeds.
Rooting out more strawberry plants
After fruiting or even while fruiting the mature strawberry plant will throw out young plants. Some gardeners recommend cutting them away as all the plant energy will focus on producing young plants rather than fruit.
To root them output the young stem onto the compost. Don’t cut them off just yet. Let the roots to grow out first. The plant is not strong enough to survive on its own.
Do root out the plants as there is like a 2-year life span of fruitful fruit production in a strawberry plant.
Growing tropical climate
Strawberries are not grown in warm tropical countries. They need a temperature of around 15-20 degrees to grow and produce fruit. They can grow by a sunny spot in an air condition room.
Harvest strawberry/ strawberries
Once the strawberry plants start flowering it will start to fruit. It will be white in colour before it starts ripening to red colour.
Diseases in strawberry
Like growing broad beans, there are loads of probelms growing strawberries. The one of the left is where strawberries are growing on the ground when they are left on damp soil the part that rest of the soil tends to rot. The other I am not too sure however, it looks like a slug/ slugs has been munching on it.
