Growing soft fruit - Part 3: Strawberries

Growing Soft Fruit - Part 3: Strawberries

In my opinion, English strawberries are the best in the world, thanks to our wet springs and warm summers.

Strawberry plants reproduce by sending out runners, which are clones of the mother plant. These small plants will set root wherever they land, but if you want to grow healthy strawberry plants it's important to ensure you have space between them. This means you will have to move your runner plants to a new spot.

Establishing Your Strawberry Plants

In August, we cut off the runner plants and pot them up into 9 cm pots. They'll root very fast and can be kept outside all winter.

In the spring, you will see a new shoot appearing and then they can be planted out in April when the soil is warm. As the plant is still very young, you won't get many fruits in the first year, but you should get a full crop the following year.

Caring for Established Plants

To maintain healthy plants with good air circulation, it's a good idea to plant them around 45 cm apart, giving them plenty of room to grow.

White flowers will begin to appear in early May, and as with the raspberries and all other soft fruit, it's vital that your plants get a good amount of water to help the fruit set at this time.

Once your plants have finished producing, remove any dead or dying foliage.

I then give my plants a lot of manure in the autumn, in order to build up their strength for the following year's production.

Protecting Your Plants

One of the best ways to ensure that your fruit is protected from pests and diseases is to lay down straw. The best time to do this is when the flowers appear in May. The straw will keep the strawberries off the soil and keep them dry, which will stop them from rotting on the plant.

Straw is used for this job because it's hollow in the centre, so any moisture will run off it, thus keeping your fruits dry. Moisture is an invitation to slugs too, so by keeping the environment dry you are helping to limit the chances of pests eating your crop.

Slugs aren't the only animal that will eat your strawberries though and that you should look out for. Birds, mice and squirrels will also eat your crop given the chance, so make sure to net your crop before the fruit starts to ripen. Once you've harvested all of your crop, remove the net and store it for next year.

Harvesting

During hot weather, you will need to harvest your fruits on a daily basis, to prevent them rotting on the plants. If the weather isn't too hot though, then harvesting twice a week is fine.

If you have a lot of plants, make sure you are harvesting from all of them every few days, to ensure that no plants get forgotten.

You want to pick your strawberries when they are at their reddest, but before they are overripe. However, if you are making jam, it is fine to use overripe and mushy strawberries.

As you pick, if you come across any strawberries with mould or mildew, remove them immediately to prevent the contamination of other fruits.

At Fern Verrow, we replace our plants every three years by potting up new runners, as strawberry plants eventually get tired and won't produce the same quality of fruit after this time.