Strawberries 101: How To Grow & Plant A Ton Of Strawberries In Your Home Backyard Garden

This comprehensive guide will discuss everything you need to know about planting and growing strawberry plants so you harvest an abundance of berries in your own backyard garden. 

Check out the video version of this guide here:

Strawberry Cultivar Selection
There are 4 categories of strawberries named according to when they are harvested. It is important to select the correct cultivar that will grow best in your garden.

1. June-Bearing Strawberries: These produce one large crop in early summer. They grow best in regions with cold winters, like the Northeast and Midwest that grow strawberries during the summer. June-bearing strawberries tend to be the biggest in size when compared to the other types.

Popular cultivars include: Sequoia & Chandler.

2. Everbearing Strawberries: Set flowers and fruit throughout summer and fall. Their fruit size is smaller than June-bearing strawberries, but they produce over a period of many weeks. A lot of the strawberry cultivars in this group are day light sensitive, meaning they are triggered to flower and produce fruit when the days are very long, hence why they produce summer thru fall.

Popular cultivars include: Albion, Ozark Beauty, Eversweet, & Seascape.

3. Day-Neutral Strawberries: Day-neutral varieties produce fruit consistently from spring to fall and can be grown in most regions. They are not day light sensitive, (as in require certain amounts light per day to produce), like some of the other varieties.

Popular cultivars include: Tristar, & Tribute

4. Short Day Strawberries: A lot of Florida Universities have developed cultivars that are considered "short day" meaning they don't require a lot of day light hours to produce, which is very beneficial to southern gardeners that grow strawberries during the winter, when there are less day light hours.

Popular cultivars include: Florida Brilliance, Sweet Sensation, Florida Radiance, and Strawberry Festival.

If you have a favorite strawberry cultivar that produces a lot, please drop the name of that cultivar in the comments below.

Are Strawberry Plants Perennial Or Annual?
Most strawberry plants are perennial (in zones 4 to 8) and will produce berries for many years as long as the plants are healthy. You can even propagate the runners to make more plants.

However, those of us in zones 9 and up with very hot summers grow strawberries like a cool season annual. This is because the summer heat and high disease/pest pressure kill the plants. So they are not perennial for hot climates.

Here in Florida, strawberries are planted in October and November and we start harvesting in December with the last harvest being around early April. Then the plants just die. Usually, the strawberry farmers plant them in a raised rows covered in plastic because the plastic blocks weeds and prevents the ripening berries from touching the ground where they get dirty and rot.

Where To Purchase Strawberry Bare Root Plants?
Strawberries can be started from seed. However, it is difficult to grow them from seed and is only worth the time/effort for gardeners in areas where strawberries are perennial plants. In warmer climates, its best to plant strawberries from bare roots also called strawberry crowns.

Check my website first to see if I have any strawberry bare roots in stock. Or check out local nurseries that carry the bare root cultivars that will perform best in your state. Most nurseries/websites start taking strawberry bare root pre-orders in August/September and they sell out quickly. So if you wait until October/November when its time to plant, it can be very difficult to find bareroots. Ask around Facebook garden groups, check Etsy or Amazon.

When To Plant Bare Root Strawberries

Zones 4 to 7: Plant strawberries in the spring, as soon as your last spring frost has passed and the ground is workable.

Zones 8 to 11: Plant strawberries in the fall, October to November. They grow best during the coolest part of the year.

Strawberry Ideal Growing Conditions

• Sun: They require full sun (8+ hours) to produce a lot of berries.
• Soil: Find a spot in your garden with well-draining soil, free from weeds, and that has good air circulation. Berries, like strawberries, blackberries and blueberries prefer soil on the acidic side, ideally a pH of 5.5 to 6.5. Mix in very fine pine bark mulch into the soil which helps reduce pH or sprinkle some acidifying sulfur granules (find it here on Amazon). Or buy soil mixes formulated for berries, like Fox Farms brand "Strawberry Fields" soil (find it here on Amazon) or use an acid loving plant soil mix, like the "Azalea, Camellia, Rhododendron" soil mixes (find it here on Amazon). Strawberries are heavy feeders, so soil rich in organic matter helps a lot. Make sure the soil drains well, because strawberry bare roots , are very susceptible to root rot. If your in a rainy or humid area, its a great idea to grow them in containers, grow bags, raised beds, or raised rows of soil. This also helps improve air circulation which reduces leaf diseases and picks the plants off from the ground making it harder for pests to get on them. This year I am planting my strawberries in a Greenstalk 7 Tier Leaf Vertical Planter (find it here on Amazon).
• Spacing and Planting: If your planting them in rows, space them 10-12 inches apart. If your planting in containers or grow bags, then do you best.
• Fertilizing: If planting in the ground, apply some sort of fertilizer into the planting hole. I recommend a fertilizer that also reduces pH at the same time, like Espoma Berry-Tone (find it here on Amazon) or MiracleGro Acid Loving Plant Food (find it here on Amazon). Apply some more fertilizer in a few weeks once you see new green growth appear, and repeat every 3 weeks.

How To Plant Bare Root Strawberries

No matter how your growing them, in ground versus containers, planting them is going to be the same.

1. Soak the bare root strawberry plants in water for an hour to rehydrate them. Add a splash of fish emulsion or liquid kelp or seaweed to give them an extra boost.

2. Add fertilizer into the planting hole.

3. Burry the crown (where the roots meet the stem) at soil level. Do not cover the crown portion with soil or it will rot out and kill the entire plant. 

4. Apply a layer of mulch around the plants to retain moisture and suppress weeds. Straw, pine straw, or pine bark mulch are great options because they help reduce soil pH. 

5. Water your strawberry plants thoroughly after planting, and then keep the soil consistently moist but not waterlogged throughout the growing season. Berries will not form properly if there is not enough water.

Strawberry Plant Care Tips, Diseases, & Pests

• Pruning: Remove any heavily diseased or damaged leaves. 
• Cut off any runners that appear during the growing season to encourage larger fruit production. You can propagate these runners to have more plants.
• Fertilize every week with small doses (like 1/8 cup) or an organic granular fertilizer to keep nutrient levels consistent.
• Disease: The most common strawberry diseases are powdery mildew and fungal leaf diseases. Spray with 1 cup hydrogen peroxide per gallon of water to clean and disinfect.
• Pests: The most common pests you will get when growing strawberries are aphids, spider mites, thrips, and worms. Aphids, spider mites, and thrips can be controlled with organic insecticidal soap (find it here on Amazon). Spider mites can be tough, so if the soap doesn't help switch to spinosad (find it here on Amazon). For all kinds of worm damage, I recommend you spray with BT (bacillus thurengensis), (find it here on Amazon) or spinosad. And I will link to where you can find all of these treatments in the description below.

How & When To Harvest Strawberries
It takes about 21 days from flower to harvestable fruit. Harvest ripe strawberries when they are 3/4 red, not all the way red, because the fully red ones wont last as long after harvested. Strawberries don't continue to ripen once picked off the plant. Frequent harvests will make the plants produce more, so stay on top of it.