Step-by-Step Project: How to grow the best strawberries

We grow rows and rows of strawberries in water tank garden beds, this stops the fruit being eaten by lizards. Bird netting during fruiting is sometimes necessary to prevent birds from eating fruit. Strawberries fruit well and usually don't make it to the kitchen because someone eats them straight of the bushes! We feed every 2 weeks with Harvest or diluted comfrey tea which results in plenty of flowers and fruits  developing. Remove the old yellow leaves and keep up a layer of straw or sugarcane around them so the fruits don't touch the soil.

Planting:

A patch of strawberries can be very rewarding. In warm temperate areas it takes only 12 weeks from planting the runners to picking the fruit. So, be sure to:

1. In warm areas plant from March to May. In cold areas plant after winter. Select a sunny site that slopes slightly as strawberries do not like ‘wet feet’. An area 1m x 1m will provide enough fruit for a family of two.

2. Prepare the strawberry bed at least two months before planting the runners. Strawberries are heavy feeders and prefer a light, rich loam with plenty of compost added and a pH of between five and six. Sprinkle lime or dolomite over a new bed and rake in generous amounts of compost, plus well-rotted animal and chicken manure. Water the bed thoroughly, then leave the worms, microbes and soil bacteria to begin processing the raw materials. Mounding the soil will help prevent wet feet.

3. After three weeks, add chicken manure pellets and a large barrowful of well-rotted compost to every 1 square metre of prepared soil. Fork over the prepared area, and cultivate the soil to a fine texture.

We like: 'Tioga' - abundant large sweet fruit and 'Red Gauntlet' - medium sweet fruit and vigorous plants

5. Plant 50cm apart. Ensure the soil is moist at the time of planting and, to firm the soil, water the runners immediately after planting. For the first two weeks after the runners are set out, don’t allow the soil to dry out. If strawberries are planted too high, the roots will dry out and if planted too low, the crown tends to silt up. 

6. Once the crop has established itself, water regularly to keep it growing and cropping. Feed with home made Comfrey tea will assist in larger fruit. Foliar feed (spray the whole plant with seaweed as the leaves absorb the nutrient as well as the roots) your strawberry plants with seaweed extract and comfrey tea every two weeks during the flowering period, to assist fruit set, help control fungus diseases and keep the plants healthy. 

7. Harvest strawberries the day they become ripe, fully coloured and slightly soft. Pull them off carefully with stem and cap still attached. Refridgerate immediately. Check the plants daily and use the fresh berries quickly.

Works wonders...

* Comfrey tea as a liquid fertiliser to encourage bigger fruit.

* If you already have some large strawberry plants April is the time to cut off the runners and replant them in another patch. Throw out old strawberry plants after you have taken the runners. Cut individual runner off, trim dead leaves, and either replant into a new patch (for those with good root systems) or into pots for planting later (for those with poor root systems).