How To Grow Strawberries At Home To Start Your Victory Garden

Strawberries are one of the most rewarding food crops to grow in a small home garden. Homegrown berries taste far better than the store-bought ones and you can save some serious money by not having to pay supermarket prices.

While most fruit trees take several years to begin bearing, you can harvest your own strawberries the very first summer.

1. DECIDE WHERE TO GROW YOUR STRAWBERRIES
Get them some sun on the balcony, rooftop, patio or doorstep.

And even if you live in an apartment, condo, townhouse, or small home, you can grow berries in a container on your balcony, rooftop, patio, or even doorstep. If your horizontal space is limited, consider growing strawberries in a hanging basket or stacked planter, which will allow you to take advantage of vertical growing space as the strawberry plants tumble out over the sides. By home-growing your own berries, you will also be helping the environment, since commercially grown strawberries use wasteful amounts of water, chemical fertilizers, and some of the worst pesticides imaginable, not to mention the environmental cost of shipping them for hundreds or thousands of miles.

A sunny spot outside your home is the best place to grow strawberries, though you can get a partial crop with less than a half day of direct sunlight. For shadier spots, try planting Alpine strawberries (available from vegetable seed catalogs and online nurseries), which take more patience but ultimately produce delicious fruit.

2. CHOOSE A CONTAINER FOR THEM
Give your plants enough room to grow.

Whether you choose a container made of clay, plastic, wood, or other material, make sure it has a soil depth of at least 12-14 inches to give the plants' root systems space to grow. How many plants you can fit in will depend upon the width of the container, since you should space plants about 10-12 inches apart to allow them to spread horizontally.

3. FILL THE CONTAINER WITH SOIL THAT MAKES STRAWBERRIES HAPPY
Strawberries like room!

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Strawberries like deep, loamy soil that drains well. This means that it should contain plenty of organic matter (such as compost, shredded bark or peat moss) as well as some sand or grit. Most potting soil mixes sold at nurseries will be sufficient, and if you have access to compost, sprinkle an inch or so on top. Be sure the container has drainage holes in the bottom.

Before planting, buy a small bag of organic fertilizer from your nursery, mix it into your soil, and water this down. You can ask your nursery to recommend the right fertilizer for your soil type and region, but in general, strawberries like plenty of nitrogen plus balanced amounts of the other major nutrients. A 10-10-10 fertilizer is not excessive, especially since organic fertilizers have a slower release time.

4. GET YOUR STRAWBERRY PLANTS
Want your strawberries this year, or can you wait?

Your next step is to find some plants and put them in the soil. There are two main kinds of strawberries available: "June-bearing" plants that will bear in spring or early summer, and "Everbearing" or day-neutral varieties that can bear from early summer right up until your first frost. While June-bearing varieties can take a year to establish (you normally plant them now for next year's harvest), everbearing plants can give you fruit the very first year and may allow you to extend your harvest over a period of weeks or months. There are many great varieties of strawberries out there and your local nursery should be able to recommend some good ones for the climate in your area. Sequoia and Chandler are the two sweetest berries I have ever tasted, while Seascape, Honeoye, Quinalt, Tristar, and Allstar have proven themselves in multiple climates.

5. CARE FOR YOUR PLANTS AND ENJOY

For optimum production, keep your strawberry plants well watered throughout the growing season. Plants should continue to be productive for at least 2-3 years, but will need to be replaced thereafter. To renovate June-bearing plants for next year, trim off their old leaves, making sure not to damage the center stalk (crown) of the plant. Everbearers do not need this trimming, but all plants should be given some top-dressed fertilizer again after fruiting. I wish you the best of success in growing your own berries!

R.J. Ruppenthal is author of FRESH FOOD FROM SMALL SPACES

Comments

[elizlucinda]

Where I live people when people plant gardens they are encouraged to "grow a row of vegetables for the local food banks. Gardening is good exercise, and it will helps you save money if you share the expense of the fertilizer with others. It is also a good way to relieve stress so why not try it!

[kshawNCvoter]

thats a good idea about the food bank thing. i believe mrs. o is gonna donate too. my back yard is not huge but maybe i will try to grow something to for my local fb. now i need to find out where that is.

[StephanieInCA]

With the current state of biotech and large-scale farming, the idea of a modern-day "victory garden" is naive at best and insulting at worst. People who are really struggling to put food on the table don't have time for this kind of bourgeois BS: http://urbzen.com/2009/03/16/the-recession-garden-seeds-of-discontent/

[DragonFly]

On a related note - the 'White House Organic Garden Project Petition':
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/organic-garden-project-on-White-House-Grounds

[FrTown]

It's much easier and cheaper to grow fruits and vegetable in my tiny backyard that maintaining the d@mn grass.
With the economy going south and produces' prices going way north, I think it's time to start using the yard in a productive way.
The sight of those beautiful fruits and vegetable beats the heck out f a manicured grass patch.

[MrHacks]

This is relevant to my interest. MOAR!

[kshawNCvoter]

i agree with this comment. is there a forum on here for moar chat on this? wants

[mimi99]

I have used coffee grinds that I pick up at the local coffee shop for fertilizer ( it contains Nitrogen) and I have been growing beautiful gardenias, jasmin, orchids, lavender, lemon inside my house. I just mix the grinds with the soil. It is free and my plants love it. Now this gave me the idea of growing more things sch as vegetables and berries (although I do that in the summer time, but since I live in upstate NY, it is a very short season). I cut the bottom of soda bottles and use them as mini green house on the small shoots. It works wonder. Also use them to grow orchids, their roots need light.

[Bill Lorch]

I am 70 an live in Joliet IL However I was raised in the Hudson River Vally in NYS.(Cornwall) An understand the art of growing as long as i can remember we always had a "Victory Garden" , Now here i continue to garden, an now to the crux of the matter , I also keep red worms for my veggie scraps an i make maxim use of coffee grounds, One word of warning tho they make the soil very acid if you are raising Tomatoes ,Blue berries,or other acid loving plants the plants love it. OH I also Keep a hive of bee,s at my home, i just make chunk honey, A nice cut of honey combs makes happy neighbors!! If anyone gardens they should consider a hive of the industrious little critters .. Sat morning thoughts>>> BILL

[RedBlue7]

VOTE: 2 things which made America a prosperous nation until 2001...

http://www.e-paperview.com/epaper-poll-1.html/

[juliewolves]

I live in the East Bay in Northern California. It's a bit of work, but every March I rework my 6 x 12 ft. strawberry bed. I pull out all the redwood bark, which keeps the fruit off the damp soil. I pull the dead leaves off the plants, removing any slugs or snalis I find. Then I work alfalfa meal and chicken manure fertilizer into the soil between the plants, replace the redwood bark, and sprinkle a border of sawdust snail killer. For any pests, like aphids, I place lady bugs, lace wings, and aphidyzma aphidolytes in the bed. I don't use pesticides anywhere in the garden, just predators and parasites of the pests. Once the strawberries start to bloom I feed them with soluble fruit and flower fertilizer every 2 weeks. They need a good soak twice a week throughout the summer. After experimenting I found that the small fruiting varieties have the strongest flavor. Last year they produced so many strawberries that I made a few pints of strawberry preserves in addition to the many baskets of fresh strawberries. Delicious!

[neurogrl]

MMM thanks for this article. I just moved to a climate that is more amenable to gardening and I want to put strawberries outside my front door.

[Snickerdoodle2]

I would love to be able to grow my own produce, but the gophers, rats, mice, deer, quail, wild turkeys, blue jays, raccoons, rabbits and skunks love strawberries too. I've had to give up--It's just easier to stop by the farmer's market.

[Punkynsnow]

You can grow strawberries in hanging pots!

[kshawNCvoter]

where do you live? so many critters.....*amazed*

[brooklyncitizen]

Gee...gardenning is so intimidating.

[frantaylor]

Indeed! I wouldn't grow food with Brooklyn's soil! If you live in Brooklyn, you could have tailings from the Gowanus Canal in your back yard.

[brooklyncitizen]

Ever heard of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden?
Brooklyn is a big place...the Gowanus, not so much.

[Alan Hecker]

You do know that the areas of Park Slope, Prospect & Crown Heights Brooklyn, before the creation of Prospect Park & Grand Army Plaza, was all farms, right? And that even today the soil is excellent for growing things? Notice, even, how all the front lawns & backyards of Carroll Gardens have such great plants & trees? And the canal's less of a mess than it has been for the last 30 years (even though it still smells pretty racid some nights in the summer).

[Punkynsnow]

I grew a pretty nice garden in containers in front of my old apartment in Brooklyn back in the late 80s. I had veggies and flowers, it looked great.

[artisthawk]

Yes, if you want a challenge try it and keep at it until you get it right. start very small. I now love it and find it is good therapy and rewarding.

[reallymolly]

It's intimidating if you live in Phoenix and everything you try to grow burns up before it has a chance to grow.

[Bill Lorch]

I was born in Brooklyn( NYC) Long ago I remember Ebbits Field Jackie Roberson ,Pea Wee Reese,Roy Campnella, Now you have an idea how old i am. But I want to say no matter where you live you can grow herbs, strawberries in a "STRAWBERRY JAR",some tomato types can be grown in containers. I would advise anyone interested to go to the library and read up on container gardening. or find a copie of Mother earth news laying around full of idea's to dream on. Remember dreams are the builders of tomorrow>>>Bill

[frantaylor]

Instead of paying supermarket prices for strawberries, pay supermarket prices for fertilizer and topsoil that weigh ten times as much as the strawberries and use ten times the fuel to get them to the supermarket.

Somewhere the math doesn't add up. Whatever happened to "economy of scale"?

[Jillianw]

For those of us that make our own compost, hauling bags of dirt isn't an issue.

And the vegies and plants love it too.

[69fasty]

Somewhere I read that strawberries are the most water intensive crop that yields a fruit that's basically sugar water, with little nutritional value.

[NewYorkStateofMind]

strawberries have a lot of nutritional value, like most any fruit or vegetable

http://whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=32

[Kiwuck]

strawberries have a great deal of nutritional value. Not only the standard vitamins available from all fresh fruit, but also the benefits of whole seeds such as you would get from grains or nuts, because the tiny seeds on the outside of the fruit are eaten with with fruit. On top of that, they are second only to blueberries in the amount of anti-oxidents they provide.

[Moshe]

I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this post.

And anyone can garden anyplace. Even if you have no access to the outside, you can still grow your own fresh sprouts indoors year round ready to eat in days.

You can grow herbs, tomatoes, etc., in a container, and if you have access to an outside garden space with sufficient light, you can grow most anything. I even know a guy who grows figs in Michigan (he bends them over and covers them with soil to survive the winter).

Just a few quick tips: 1) Start small and expand as your interests and skills expand; 2) Don't use pesticides, you really don't need them and you can get poison food in the grocery already, grow organic for you and your family; 3) Make sure the soil has as much organic matter as you can get in it (add in old leaves, grass clippings, wood ashes, whatever clean organic matter you can find) because healthy soil grows healthy plants; 4) grow what you like to eat, but also be bold and try new things that interest you. That's part of the fun.

Gardening is also a great way to relax, have a more positive and hopeful outlook, and be healthier, all at a very low cost.

If 300 million Americans were doing this, or even just half of us, our Nation would be a far healthier, better place in just one growing season.

[sf girl]

Great comments. You are so right.

[frantaylor]

"Even if you have no access to the outside"

Where does one get the copious amounts of light necessary to grow vegetables indoors? Electric lighting? How is this helping?

[Moshe]

Hi Fran. Growing sprouts requires no sunlight. Neither does growing mushrooms. And when I was in college, I grew tomatoes (yes; seriously; only tomatoes) in an apartment window without supplemental light just by using aluminum foil and cardboard to make a window reflector box. And even if you use a flurescent grow light, it's probably using less energy than most of the other lights in your house, but also producing both healthy food and the knowledge and desire to take the next step and start an outside garden.

Shalom friend.

[Agathena]

I'll be growing strawberries on my condo balcony in addition to the usual lettuce and herbs. I'm thinking of the hanging basket strawberries. Mmm can't wait for it to warm up around here.