Pot up strawberries for forcing
I’ve just tucked my main strawberry bed away for winter, but I’m already taking steps towards next year’s crop. Fragrant strawberries and a bowl of sugar are my idea of heaven. By potting up young plants now, you can be tucking into home-grown fruits come late April of next year, weeks ahead of outdoor varieties.
It’s important to choose early-maturing varieties for this project, such as ‘emily’, ‘elvira’, ‘Rosie’ and ‘Honeoye’, as they’re genetically pre-programmed to be some of the first to crop.
Pot up healthy young plants of these now (either use vigorous plants from your own beds or, ideally, buy in bare-root runners from mail order fruit nurseries).
Bought runners may already have been chilled (check with the supplier) but home-grown plants need to be left outside in their pots until mid-January. It’s important that your plants are exposed to some form of cold spell because this synchronises flowering to give an almighty flush of blooms as soon as the weather is warm enough.
Moving your potted plants into an unheated greenhouse in mid-January Pot-up young plants now and you could be tucking into delicious strawbs in late April
will gently start them into growth (if you can afford to heat it or you have a conservatory, that’s even better.)
Watering with a liquid balanced feed will start things along, but switch to high-potash once flowers form. Gently rub your hands over the blooms to pollinate them, then it’s just a case of waiting for the berries to colour up.