Indulge in strawberries
Given how quickly strawberries begin to bear fruit and how easily they are grown, it’s a wonder strawberry beds aren’t as common in backyards as lawns are in front yards.
The most compelling reason to grow strawberries is, of course, flavour. Variety selection and premature harvest make grocers’ berries large and firm, but usually not much else. In your backyard, you can grow the most flavourful varieties, and wait to pick them until they’re sweet and oozing strawberry-ness.
KINDS OF STRAWBERRIES
Depending on how soon you want to start eating strawberries, choose between “everbearers” and “junebearers.”
Everbearers offer the quickest crops, less than three months after planting, and bear all season long. Tristar is among the best. Some of the older types bear in spring and fall only.
Junebearers come in greater variety and yield more, but wait to bear their first crop until the year after planting. Once started, they bear once per season, in spring or early summer. Planting two or more junebearing varieties can extend the harvest.
Spring is a good time to plant strawberries, although they can also be planted in late summer or fall.
Your new plants may look forlorn, but they soon grow new roots and leaves. You can shear their roots back to three or four inches (eight or 10 cm) with scissors so you can more easily fan them out in the planting hole.
Adjust the planting depth carefully, leaving only the top half-inch (1.2 cm) of the crown exposed so it neither dries out from exposure nor suffocates from burial.
The fruit’s name might reflect the plants’ habit of strewing about with runners, which are horizontal stems punctuated along their length by daughter plants. The daughter plants root and make their own runners.
The name “strawberry” might also come from a centuries-old favourite mulch for strawberries: straw. The plants love to be mulched. Mulch keeps the soil moist, suppresses weeds and keeps the fruit cleaner. Give strawberries a year-round, organic mulch.
Spacing depends on your method of growing.
With the “hill system,” you plant them close together — nine inches (22.5 cm) apart in a double row with nine inches (22.5 cm) between rows — and avoid future crowding by pinching off all runners. More plants are needed to get started, but initial yields are highest.
With the “matted row system,” you set plants at wide spacing — 24 inches (61 cm) apart in single rows with four feet (1.2 metres) between rows — and allow plants to make runners like crazy. Fewer plants are needed to get started, but the first crop is smaller.
Never allow the mat of mother and daughter plants to spread wider than 18 inches (46 cm), and thin out crowded plants.
No matter which system you adopt, pinch off all flowers that appear during the month after planting to coax plants to put their energy into growing strong roots.