Hi, my name's Matthew Oliver I am the veg gardener here at RHS Garden Hyde Hall in
the Global Growth Vegetable Garden, and today I'm going to show you how to pot up
newly delivered bare-root strawberry plants.
So now we're in the dormant season, it's a fantastic time to be planting
all fruit plants because the plants are not actively growing and therefore they can be sent
through mail order as bare-root plants. Bare-root means that they come in not in a pot and with not
any soil or compost around them so you can get lots delivered in a very small parcel.
So today I'm going to be planting a variety called 'Cambridge Favorite' which is a very
old variety - extremely popular - and one of the ones that's considered best for flavour.
These have arrived in the post and we want to pot them up straight away so that the roots
don't desiccate out and the plants die. I'm going to be potting these up into a three liter pot,
and the reason I'm doing that is because I want to force these plants for an early crop next
year. So we'll pot these up and they'll live in the cold frame through the winter and then
about February, late February / March time, I'll bring them into our glasshouse and I'll
plunge plant this pot in the greenhouse into the soil and the extra heat in the greenhouse will
help spur these plants into life. And the idea is we'll get earlier flowering and earlier fruiting
and we should have a crop of strawberries for around Easter time if I do this well.
Alternatively if you don't have a glasshouse it's now exactly the same time to plant these up
and you can plant them straight out into the beds in the garden, directly into the soil,
and they will flower fruit for you at the normal time which is about June next year. So
what we're using is we're using a peat-free potting compost this is a bark based mix
because we are planting plants that are going to be in these pots for a fairly substantial amount
of time. You could use a more loam-based compost that's a compost that's got soil or mineral
content in it that would give it a bit of extra weight and a bit more fertility.
But this peat-free mix is absolutely fine, all we've got to do is remember when we start the
plants into growth in the spring we need to be a bit more regular with the feeding so they've got
the energy to produce a crop for us. That's really easy, only one thing you really need
to remember with strawberries and that is to pay close attention to where the crown of the plant is
and it's very easy to plant strawberries too deep because they've got a very short and stubby crown
to the plant and it's very easy to pop them up right to the base of the leaves - but really
you've got to pay attention and I need to get the soil level to the just to the tops of the roots,
so I want to spread the roots out nicely in the pot.
Hold the plant where we need it, just nice and loosely scoop the compost into place
and just tap down a little bit to get all the air pockets out. Don't want to firm in too much,
you still want it nice and loose and airy. Top up to make sure we're correct for level
but we also want to make sure that we're leaving a slight rim around the top of the pot
so that when we water the water doesn't just run straight out the sides - it
does actually drain through the pot. And that's it! That will go in the cold frame,
and the reason we'll be putting these out in the cold frame immediately after potting them on,
is because they do actually need exposure to the cold weather in the winter months in order to
encourage the plant to flower and fruit well later on in the summer. So we'll bring that indoors
early spring next year and hopefully we'll have a fantastic crop off of them.