Secrets to Growing Summer Strawberries

We enjoy growing strawberries in the summertime, they produce well in the heat. We grow them in raised beds often. We like to use Flower Street Urban Gardens, which is an elegant wall garden. It keeps our strawberries off the ground and still provides a good amount of soil for them to grow in. If the wall structure is facing east on a wall it will get morning sun and afternoon shade. As the strawberries grow they will crest over the side which makes it really easy to harvest and keeps them out of the way of any slugs.

For growing strawberries you want to have about 6″ of good organic-dense soil. You will want to add about an 1 inch of pine needles or straw on the surface around where the strawberries are growing. They are called strawberries for a reason. They do tend to grow best as they lay out over the top of some dry material such as straw. When planting the strawberries you will want to mount them at the base of the crown at the soil level. Then mound up the pine needles or straw.

If you are using matted row planting, which is a ground cover method, you will want to plant them 12″ apart in off-set rows and set runners around them.

If you are using the double hill planting in a 10×10 space keep in mind that the first year you will get a bigger strawberry, however, the second year might be smaller. A good trick is to transplant the strawberry plant into a new spot in your garden that second year.

We like to using fish emulsion to fertilize the strawberries. Use it twice monthly starting in the beginning of the spring. Use a 1 oz per gallon mixture at night on the underside of the leaves, don’t spray directly on the plant. The straw will help to spread the fish emulsion into the soil. In the morning you can spray the plants with fresh water to rinse off the plant before the sun comes up.

Water the plants about 1 inch per week about a half gallon per square foot. For the first three months we recommend pinching off the flowers that bloom in the strawberry plant to help the roots to grow more which will help the strawberries to grow larger.

If you want to learn more about growing strawberries and other berries, grapes and tomatoes in the summer you will want to join our Mastery Membership! To learn more about the Membership visit https://agriscaping.com/diy-mastery/