Strawberries: From Planting to Harvesting

The sweet strawberries from your own garden simply taste best. We show what is important when planting and caring for strawberries.

The start of the season for local strawberries (Fragaria) is eagerly awaited by many strawberry lovers every year. And when the time comes and strawberries even thrive in your own garden, adults and children are just as happy. Discovering the bright red fruits in the bed and eating them directly is a wonderful experience every year.

We will tell you how best to plant, care for, overwinter and ultimately harvest and store strawberries naturally so that you can enjoy your harvest to the fullest. We also provide an overview of the best strawberry varieties for your garden.

Strawberry Varieties

If you only look for strawberries in the garden trade, you will unfortunately be denied a huge variety of varieties. Many varieties are less well known, but are definitely worth a search. In principle, strawberry varieties can be differentiated according to the time of harvest. Some of the early-ripening varieties (such as 'Fraroma', 'Lambada', 'Haneoye' or 'Elvira') can be harvested as early as May. The late-ripening varieties (e.g. 'Symphony' or 'Mieze Schindler') bear fruit until around the end of August. The popular varieties 'Korona' and 'Sonata' are among the medium-early varieties that ripen exactly in the strawberry season. There are also varieties that bear twice or more times, such as 'Ostara'. The different varieties not only vary in the time of ripening, but also in terms of their taste, their consistency, their demands on the location and their susceptibility to disease, as well as many other factors. You can read here which strawberry variety suits you and your garden best.

Plant Strawberries

When planting strawberries, there are a few things to keep in mind for a successful harvest. We offer advice on location and planting time, and also show you how to grow strawberries on the balcony or even vertically.

Planting strawberries: choice of location

The successful cultivation depends as alwayslargely depends on the location where the plant thrives and the correct planting process.

Strawberry plants are very sensitive to frost. They therefore prefer wind-protected places where no cold lakes form. Sunny locations with well-structured, well-aerated, humus-rich soil are therefore ideal. Like most berries, strawberries like slightly acidic soil, although botanically they are not berries at all but aggregate fruits. However, they tolerate soil compaction and waterlogging less well. So if there is a bed with heavy soil that is not too loamy and in a sunny location that is as sheltered as possible, there is nothing wrong with planting strawberries.

Strawberries are relatively undemanding and can therefore easily be planted in pots or window boxes. The Plantura organic tomato and vegetable soil, for example, is ideal for this. In this way, balcony owners can also grow the delicious summer fruits at home. In addition, pots often have the advantage that they are easy to transport and the strawberry plants can be better protected from frost in this way. In dry conditions, however, the roots in a pot have fewer options for water supply. When growing strawberries in pots, you should always pay more attention to watering than in beds.

Planting Strawberries: Planting Time

Strawberries are best planted from late July to mid-August. They then have enough time over the late summer and fall to develop roots and flower buds for next year's first harvest. If you missed this period of time, you can still plant the strawberries until September and spring without any worries. However, these only bear fruit a year later.

Planting strawberries: a four-step process

1. Work some compost, composted manure or organic fertilizer into the soil before planting or put some in the planting hole when planting. This gives the little strawberry plants the energy to grow.
2. Place the plants on the bed so that there is always 25 to 30 cm of space between the strawberries in a row. Leave a gap of about 40 to 45 cm to the next row. In pots or troughs, a circular space with a diameter of 25 cm is calculated for each plant. The strawberry is planted in the middle of the circle.
3. Wellthe young plants are placed in the ground. Pay attention to the correct planting depth. This is very important as the heart leaves (the small growth tips in the middle of the plant) or the roots can easily rot if the plants are too deep. On the other hand, strawberries planted too high run the risk of their roots drying out.
4. Now water the plants properly. In summer temperatures, water a little every day for a week if possible. After that, keep the strawberries from drying out for another two to three weeks, watering them every few days if necessary.

Read this article for more detailed information on the perfect location and the correct procedure for planting strawberries.

Growing strawberries on the balcony

Especially if you have limited space, you can think about so-called hanging and climbing strawberries. All strawberry varieties that produce vigorous runners are suitable for both climbing and hanging. If you want a climbing strawberry, the tendrils are pulled up a scaffold. If you don't do this, you automatically have hanging strawberries, as the runners hang down from the mother plant. Traffic light strawberries are also another way to harvest strawberries on balconies or to let them have a decorative effect.

Read more about how to grow strawberries on the balcony in this article.

Growing Strawberries Vertically

If you have very little space, you can also grow strawberries vertically - i.e. on top of each other. This is the trend of so-called vertical gardening, which is both space-saving and decorative.

You can find out how to create a vertical strawberry garden using gutters or pipes in our special article here.

Caring for strawberries

For a good harvest, strawberries should be properly fertilized, watered and overwintered. We will also show you why pruning after harvest is worthwhile.

Fertilize strawberries

The nutrient requirements of strawberries are not very high and garden soils are usually rich in nutrients. Nevertheless, you can encourage your little plants a little. A little compost should be added to the strawberries when they are planted - this will help them grow. are also suitableslow acting organic fertilizers. After each harvest, fertilization with compost (approx. 3 to 5 l/m²), composted manure or potassium-rich fertilizer such as our Plantura organic tomato fertilizer is recommended. In autumn, the plants form the flowers for the next year and need a lot of energy for this. In the spring that follows, there is again a little compost (3 to 5 l/m²) or fertilizer (see packaging for the amount to be used) for the little plants. This continues until fall, when the plants are harvested for the last time (usually after three years of harvest).

You can find more information on how to fertilize strawberries correctly here in our special article.

Mainly organic long-term fertilization: instructions and dosage amounts for strawberries

1. Before planting: Work 60 - 110 g/m² (5 to 9 tablespoons) of our Plantura organic tomato fertilizer into the top soil layers
2. Water the soil and the freshly planted plants well so that the granulate can loosen
3. Fertilize in autumn after harvest and in spring 40 - 70 g per plant (3 to 5 heaped tablespoons)

Tip: If you already have our Plantura organic universal fertilizer at home, you can simply use it to fertilize your strawberries. Although it is less potassium-rich than the tomato fertilizer, it is still suitable.

Watering strawberries

The strawberry places high demands on its water supply. At the time of its quite early budding, it can usually still draw on the relatively moist winter soil. Between flowering and maturity, however, it should definitely be watered during the dry periods, also during the growth phase. In the latter, it is particularly important to water daily, whereas for mature plants, watering every few days, depending on the weather, is usually sufficient. Avoid waterlogging. And remember to water in the morning (this is usually better against snails) or in the evening. After the harvest, the plants' metabolism slows down and they no longer need much water. Only after the leaves have been cut off, until the plants have produced new foliage, does it have to be helped with water if it is dry.

Cutting strawberries

Strawberry leaves are often attacked by fungal diseases. These fungi like to spend the winter on strawberry leaves, among other things, so that they can then spread quickly in spring. For this reason, strawberriesafter the harvest in the summer, either as a precaution or cut to contain the pathogen if the disease is already infested. However, this cutting of the leaves must be done by the end of July at the latest so that the plants have enough time to form young, he althy leaves and flowers for the next year before it gets cold in autumn.

In a nutshell: Which plants should you prune and how?

• For plants that have already borne fruit, cut off the foliage, especially if the leaves show abnormalities
• Freshly planted strawberries are not cut
• In the case of very late-ripening varieties, only cut until mid-August if the disease is severe
• All leaves are removed in such a way that the heart leaf is not damaged
• Foliage is removed from the bed, leaving no potential pathogens

Winter strawberries

Unfortunately, both the roots and the flowers of the strawberry plants cannot stand frost. Because the roots are not very deep and therefore not well protected. The flowers are particularly sensitive in spring and should therefore be protected from late frosts. Strawberries in a pot or window box should spend the winter in a sheltered place. If you choose a covered winter location, don't forget to water your plants lightly from time to time on frost-free days. In locations where there is a risk of frost, strawberry plants in pots should be covered with brushwood, straw or fleece, for example, just like their conspecifics in beds. However, the straw should not cover the entire plants, as this poses the risk of a humid microclimate that attracts fungi. Therefore, only lay the straw around the plants. Twigs and fleece are more permeable to air and moisture and can therefore be placed over the entire plant.

You can find more about overwintering and pruning strawberries here.

Propagate strawberries or buy plants?

If you would like to have strawberries for your own garden, the question arises as to whether you should propagate them yourself or rather buy strawberry plants. We compare these two options below.

Buy Strawberries

Strawberry plants are easy to buy in hardware stores, garden shops or online. The price for single plants or sets of several plants is extremely low. However, you should use onego on a search with a certain idea of the right variety. It is therefore advisable to find out beforehand about varieties that are adapted to the location and taste and not to ignore the time of ripening. If you consider all these criteria when choosing a variety, it can take a while before you have selected the ideal variety for your garden. However, this time is usually worth it and you can then enjoy your own harvest even more.

Propagating strawberries: sowing nuts or planting runners

Strawberries can be propagated very easily via so-called offshoots, which are often incorrectly referred to as offshoots. This type of propagation has the advantage that the offshoots are clones of the mother plants, i.e. you have the identical variety that you originally planted. However, depending on how the runners are obtained, there is a risk that the runners will spread soil-borne fungal diseases. But you can avoid this with the right technique.

You can find out exactly how stolon propagation and also the more complex propagation via the strawberry nuts work in our article on propagating strawberries.

Picking, storing and preserving strawberries

With strawberries, the line between not quite ripe and overripe is extremely narrow. It is all the more gratifying when you can harvest the red delicacies at the perfect time. But what is the best way to store strawberries when the harvest yields more fruit than can actually be eaten fresh?

Pick Strawberries

Depending on the variety, picking time is from the end of May to the end of August. In order for the fruits to keep better, however, you should harvest in the morning when the fruits are still cool. However, one must not forget that strawberries do not ripen afterward. They should therefore only be harvested when they are red all over. During the harvest season, it is advisable to pick two or three times a week.

Storing and preserving strawberries

Strawberries are very sensitive fruits and therefore unfortunately do not keep very long fresh. Above all, the good-tasting varieties from the garden that have not been selected for storability should therefore be eaten or processed within two days. During this time, strawberries will be least damaged if left spread out on a plate or shallow dish in the fridge.

The good thing is that there are countless ways to preserve the delicious fruits. Sometimes that makes them even better. Strawberries can be preserved very well in the form of jam, compote or in frozen form as ice cream, strained or as whole fruits. Read more helpful tips for freezing and preserving your strawberries here.

In this article you will also find our tips for successfully planting strawberries. And we have also compiled the top 5 sweetest strawberry varieties for you here.