Perennials
Strawberries
Bags or a bed.
- Outside
- Plant crowns in Apr
- Where
- Bed for June-bearers; bags for day-neutrals
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Deep soak every 3 to 4 days; finger test
- Harvest
- Jun flush from year two; day-neutrals to Aug
Care
- Water
- As the berries size, the bed wants a deep soak every 3 to 4 days; let the finger test settle it, watering when the top few inches are dry, less after rain, more in a heat wave. Keep it steady while the fruit fills rather than swinging bone dry.
- Sow
- Plant dormant crowns in spring, roots hanging straight down in the hole and only the top half of the crown showing above soil: buried whole it rots, perched too high it dries out. Space June-bearers 12 to 24 inches apart in the row, day-neutrals a tighter 8 to 12 inches.
- Feed
- A moderate feeder. A shovel of compost worked in at planting carries the young plants, and the one firm rule is no nitrogen in early spring: it forces soft, disease-prone leaf, so hold feeding until after fruiting. Then fish and seaweed liquid every couple of weeks while they bear, and a compost feed to renovate June-bearers once the flush ends.
- Ready
- Pinch every flower off first-year June-bearers so they build crowns for a real crop the next June. When they do fruit, pick fully red, since they ripen from the tip down and will not sweeten off the plant. Check daily once color starts, and pick dry.
- Trouble
- Gray mold turning berries to fuzz: keep airflow open, mulch straw under the fruit, water in the morning, and never let a rotten berry touch a sound one. Slugs rasping ripe fruit: bait organically and keep berries up off bare soil. Birds beating you to it: net the bed as color comes.
In a bag?
- Yes
- Up to a 5–7 gal bag.
- Water
- A bag dries far faster than a bed, so check it daily in fruiting weather and soak whenever the mix feels dry to the touch.
- Feed
- Feed a bag more often, an organic liquid monthly through the season, since every watering leaches it.
- Sow
- Day-neutrals are the bag type, one or two to the bag; June-bearers want a bed, where their runners can fill a matted row.
A strawberry bed is a three-season commitment of runner wrangling, netting, and mulch, paid back in June flavor no store manages. Bags of day-neutrals are the smaller promise; a June-bearer bed is the real one.
Growing
Plant bare-root crowns in April with the roots fanned and half the crown above the soil line. June-bearers spend year one growing, flowers pinched off, and pay in year two; day-neutrals in bags fruit their first summer and keep going into August. After the June flush, let a few runners fill gaps, then thin hard in September and tuck straw around the plants once the ground cools. A bed left to manage itself becomes a mat of leaves and marbles inside three years. The bed is thirstiest while the berries size; let it run dry in June and the fruit comes in small and seedy.
Varieties
Jewel, bred at Cornell's Geneva station, is the region's June-bearer benchmark; Earliglow ripens first and tastes best; Albion is the day-neutral for bags.
Pests
Birds watch the bed more closely than the gardener does; netting goes on at first blush or the crop simply transfers ownership. Slugs take whatever fruit touches ground in a wet June, and clean straw under the trusses is the old fix and still the best one.
In the kitchen
The June flush is jam week. Day-neutrals arrive a bowl at a time and rarely survive to be cooked.