Strawberries are at the top of so many people's favorite fruit lists and lucky
for all you strawberry lovers strawberries are one of the easiest fruits to grow in a
container. Now there are plenty of advantages to growing strawberries in a container-- this ranges
from ease of maintenance, being able to grow in a place where you may be unable to dig up the soil,
and just having more control over your growing media. But whatever
your reason for wanting to grow strawberries in containers just know that it can be done!
Now you can go as small as a six to an eight inch pot, that's about a half to one gallon pot
for one strawberry plant. Now I don't know why you would do that because it just really seems
like a tease to only grow one strawberry plant but if that's all you're able to do you can go
as small as this. And you can go as large as you want to the sky's the limit just remember that
if you're planting multiple plants in a container that you want to space your plants about 10 to 12
inches apart. This is going to give them room to put out runners and spread which will eventually
give you more fruit production. Now as I mentioned growing strawberries in containers is relatively
easy. They are not picky about soil type the most important thing when choosing a soil to pot your
strawberry plants in is that it has good drainage. Good drainage is the key. Strawberries do not like
heavy wet soil. The optimal soil for strawberries is rich in organic matter, has excellent drainage,
and has a ph of about 5.5 to 6.5-- so slightly acidic. Now almost any growing media you pick up
from a garden center will work, and feel free to dig up your soil from your backyard and put it in
a container if it meets that criteria. To fill my containers today I'm using this Just Natural
raised bed planting mix and it is a mix of processed forest products, rice hulls, peat,
compost, and worm castings. I've used it in other container plantings and I'm really happy with this
and this will work really well for strawberries. So this container that I'm using today is a tiered
strawberry planter, I got this from Gurney's Seed Company, and as you can see this will be a
three-tiered container when I'm all done filling this up and I'll be able to plant strawberries
all along each tier. I'm gonna go ahead and get all of these filled up with my planting media.
All right, we got it all filled and just to give you an idea this was nine cubic feet of
planting media that filled this entire thing. One last thing to consider before this thing is done
is that you want to position your container in as much sun as possible-- so full
sun is optimal but strawberries will grow and produce in part shade. In general though the
yields will be smaller and the berries won't be quite as sweet as those grown in full
sun. Now I'm planting bare root strawberries today and if you are using bare root it's a good idea
to soak the roots overnight, you can also use potted strawberry plants, either way is fine.
The key when planting is to make your planting hole wide and deep enough to accommodate the
root system without crowding. Now that's going to vary depending on the plant you have because the
root size is going to vary, but that's a pretty good representation of a bare root plant. So I
want to make that hole big enough, I also want the base of the crown to be level with the soil line.
So I'm just going to hold that about where that crown should be and then back fill this with dirt
tamp him down into place and that's it
The other thing if your plants have really long strangly roots
you can trim off these roots if need be. After you get everything planted feed your strawberry plants
with a balanced all-natural fertilizer you'll see a lot of people recommend a 10-10-10, I'm using a
4-3-4 fertilizer today and you'll just want to apply per the instructions on the bag or container
Something to keep in mind when fertilizing your strawberry plants
is to avoid excess nitrogen. So too much nitrogen can cause an excess of foliar growth
at the expense of fruit, and fertilizing with a nitrogen-rich fertilizer in the spring can
actually lead to soft berries. So the best time to feed your plants is after the berry harvest.
And the very last and perhaps most important step is to water your plants in thoroughly.
Now in general strawberries prefer about one to one and a half inches of water per week.
I find that in containers sometimes you can do a little more than that just because the containers
tend to dry out so quickly. All that's left to do now is wait. Now most strawberries in the home
garden are grown as perennials but when you're growing strawberries in a container you do have
the option to treat them as an annual. If you'd like to do this you want to select everbearing
or day neutral varieties and that is because these varieties have an extended period of fruit
set. The other thing that you're going to want to do is pinch off most of the runners. This will
divert the plants energy from increasing runner growth and plant size into ripening berries.
Now you don't want to get rid of all of them because you do want it to have an extended set,
just go for about three quarters of the runners. You'll then be able to harvest berries the year
of planting. Now the trade-off with that is that you're going to deplete the plants energy store,
they're never going to get established, they may live the following year but they're never
going to have great set, so usually the idea with this is you fruit them once you get rid of them
and replace them with new plants the following spring. But if you're in it for the long run and
treating them as perennials, what you'll want to do is pick off all the blossoms in the first
year-- now that's on junebearing varieties, if you're growing everbearing or day neutral plants
you'll continue to pick off the blossoms till about August, and what this is going to do is
encourage the plant to put its energy and growth into runners and root formation rather than into
fruit production. So you're allowing those plants to get really well established that first year
so that you have a bumper crop of berries and healthy plants the following year. So go out
and plant some strawberries today! And if you find content like this helpful please consider
subscribing to my channel Growfully with Jenna. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!