Strawberries

Last spring we planted 20 everbearing strawberry plants from rootstock into the cinder blocks around the raised beds.  In the first year we got a few berries here and there.  Just enough to eat fresh in the garden and make us dream of next year.  Now it's next year and we are harvesting 10-20 strawberries a day. We mostly eat them fresh, but also use them in smoothies.


There are three types of strawberry plants:  


June Bearing - These are best if you plan to freeze berries or make jams and preserves.  They are the traditional commercially grown strawberry producing large fruits in a 2-3 week span of time in early summer and then ceasing production.  


Everbearing - We prefer these for fresh eating through the whole growing season.  These are what we are currently growing.  They produce medium sized berries in 3 to 4 waves from spring to fall.  


Alpine - Small statured plants that provide a steady production of small, but very flavorful berries throughout the summer.  The entire plant is claimed to have many medicinal uses.  Our experience has shown that adding the dried leaves to herbal tea does indeed seem to help with menstrual cramps.


          Strawberry runner

Tips and Tricks:

• Trim off runners as soon as they appear to encourage the plant to put its energy into fruit production.
• Plants should be replaced at least every 3 years to maintain good production.
• For an endless supply of free new plants, choose a few of your plants to allow runners to grow on.  Once these runners have a well developed daughter plant on the end, transplant them into the desired location.  These will be genetically identical to the parent plant.
• Birds will take bites out of some berries as they ripen.  If this becomes too problematic, we have found that bird netting is an effective means of prevention.