How to Grow and Care Strawberry Plant | All You Need to Know

Strawberries seem to be small yet delicious as well. These tiny fruits are nutritious, which is why gardeners love having a strawberry plant in their home gardens. This sweet and delicious fruit is beneficial in many ways. To grow this delicious fruit in your garden, first, you need to understand that berries like to thrive in full sun, so they should be placed in a bright sunny spot where they will receive full sunlight. Most of you may have a question about which season strawberry grow in India, so the answer is between October to November and April to May. If you are a strawberry lover and eager to plant strawberries on your own, this information is especially for you! Here you’ll learn how to grow strawberries indoors (from seeds and in pots). So, let’s get started:

Quick Details of Strawberry Plant

Other Common Names	Genus Fragaria
Type	Herbaceous Perennial
Maintenance	Medium to hard
Flowering	Spring, Fall
Light	Full Sun
Water	High
Temperature	40 to 85 degree
Soil	Rich, Well-drained, Slightly Acidic
Fertilizer	Fish fertilizer or organic fertility
Habitat	Brittany, France
Toxicity	Non-toxic
Common Diseases	Powdery Mildew, Blight, Fruit Rot
Wishbone flower scientific name	Fragaria × ananassa

Strawberry plant buying instruction

Before knowing how to grow strawberries from seeds or in a pot directly, determining buying aspect is a must.

• Opt for everbearing or day-neutral variety if you want to eat fresh berries for the entire year. 
• To get the absolute quantity of berries, don’t mind choosing June-bearer, as most people do.
• In addition to the quantity, type, and variety you choose, you should get the best possible deal on plants by going through the list of strawberry seeds and strawberry plants in local stores.

Overview of Strawberry Plant

Strawberries are ideal fruit plants for any newbie gardener. One of the versatile plants that can be thrives in hanging baskets, containers, edible landscaping, and garden beds in a variety of growing conditions. The combination of bright berries and deep lush green leaves makes any garden aesthetically pleasing. As mentioned above, strawberry plant is perennials, they can be harvested repeatedly and planted once. With the help of runners, they constantly produce new successors. Best of all, they will eagerly fruit for years to come as long as they have rich enough, slightly acidic soil and space.

Varieties of Strawberry Plant

Strawberry plant is divided into three categories: ever-bearing, June-bearing, and day-neutral. Each of these versions includes substantial cultivars with varying yield potential, unique flavours, and adaptations to certain climates.

• Ever-bearing (Fort Laramie, Ozark Beauty, Quinault): Ever-bearing versions are practically not ever-bearing. They do form two to three flushes in the entire summer, spring, and fall. This variety is best for impatient gardeners and gardeners with minimal space.
• June-bearing (Earligrow, Yambu, Jewel, Burnswick, Galletta): One of the most famous traditional kinds of strawberries, they create significant flushes of juicy, large berries throughout June. 
• Day-neutral (Albion, Portola, Seascape):  Those who are checking out how to grow strawberries indoors before start buying the seeds, check out this variety as well. These are well-grown strawberry varieties because they produce in the first year and will work all summer long. You’ll get sweet berries with a consistently rich flavour.

Usage and Advantage of Strawberry Plant

Strawberries are one of the most consumed fruits worldwide, raw and added in preserves, jams, ice cream, smoothies, and baked goods. Those variations have big, firm berries that are good for freezing and consuming, while the others are smaller and good for processing. While the lush green leaves of the strawberry plant have various medicinal benefits, including treating liver disease, digestive problems, and arthritis. For indoor decorating purpose, people grow strawberries in hanging baskets. They can offer fantastic perennial ground cover in landscapes, as their flowers are an excellent source of nectar and pollen for beneficial insects and pollinators. Following are the top 5 benefits of strawberry:

• Good for heart health
• Help regulate blood sugar
• Help treat certain cancers
• Help with weight management
• Effective for people with type 2 diabetes

Strawberry Plant growing and caring tips

As we stated above, strawberries are garden as well as beginner friendly. There are several ways to grow a strawberry plant, depending on how practical you want to be. Either can be managed as a minimal care perennial ground cover. However, this method will produce fewer fruits than systematically managed plants, but you can still expect some good results year after year. On the contrary, pruning and tending often provide a plethora of berries in a minimal space, like pots. One drawback is this method of growing strawberries demands extra attention and time. Let’s understand how to grow strawberries from seeds.

1. Sunlight

Strawberries thrive in full sun, requiring about six to eight hours of warm sunlight for the most vigorous plants and tastiest fruit. Since strawberries are low-thriving plants, they will suffer from a dense upper canopy. In practice, you should grow them in an area of ​​your lawn that isn’t shaded by trees.

2. Water

Watering is important to get the most berries from your plant, especially during establishment. After planting bare root crowns or plugs, you will need to water them regularly until roots appear. For those who want to know how to grow strawberries in pots, be sure they know that their plants need water every couple of days, right after the containers start to dry out. 

One of the best watering systems for strawberry plants is drip irrigation or soaker hoses. Watering at the top of the plant causes bacterial diseases on the surface of the leaves. Thus, it is advisable to water directly to the root area.

3. Soil

Strawberries demand well-drained, rich soil that is slightly acidic. Its pH should be 5.5 to 7.0. You can also make mounds or beds of layered leaves, compost, straw, manure and topsoil. This plant becomes stressed and dwarfed in hard soil, so following these steps is recommended. Or, you can plant rich organic strawberries mixed in pots. You can add pine needles or sawdust for something else, as this will help acidify the soil if needed.

4. Temperature

As a perennial crop, strawberries can be grown best in zone 4 to 8 temperatures. Not only this but it can also be grown as an annual in cool conditions of 9 to 10. However, the ideal temperature for strawberries to produce flowers and fruit is between 60 degrees F to 80 degrees F. 

If it is very hot outside, your plant will not give a very bountiful harvest; most notably, the baby plant or even the new plant may die. Despite their popularity as a summer fruit, strawberries are ideally cold-hardy perennials. And it can withstand as low as 10 degrees f to 20 degrees f when protected by row cover fabric with a deep layer of straw mulch.

5. Fertilizer

Strawberries take a lot of effort to ripen and grow vibrant, juicy fruits. To help the plant grow, add diluted or organic fertilizer and fish liquid fertilizer at the time of seed planting, as this will help it grow and take root well. To get maximum fruits and flowers, it is advised to add fish manure once the flowers begin. The best thing to do is to use a slow-release organic fertilizer such as high-quality compost, an all-purpose mix, or well-rotted manure.

6. Maintenance and care

How to grow strawberries in pots is easy to ask, but sometimes not. However, strawberries require minimal maintenance once they get hung. Regular pruning is required for the most prolific strawberry. It is best to prune the runners to produce as many berries as possible. All you have to do is cut off the runners weekly using pruners or scissors. Chopping off runners is the best way to maintain a strawberry patch, keeping plants looking tidier, like minimal bushes, instead of matted rows.

Pests and other problems for the strawberry plant

1. Fruit Rot

Extra moist conditions tend to be rot strawberries; it would be even more if the fruits lay directly on the soil landscape. To prevent this, mix together landscape fabric, mulch, dry rotted leaves and straw.

2. Blights and Fungal Pathogens 

Some cultivars of the strawberry plant are more susceptible to the pathogen. Those that live in humid climates must be bred for resistance to powdery mildew, blight, and other pathogens.

3. Pests problem

The stigmatic plant bug appears in early spring when strawberries begin to bud, and the nymphs feed on the flowers and growing seeds. This can result in scarred, malformed or wrapped fruit. Another major issue for strawberries includes slugs, especially in heavily mulched soil. These insects cause holes in strawberries which are deep yet small.

Strawberry Plant propagation

One of the exciting things about strawberries is that they double in even faster once planted. Propagation of strawberries includes propagation by crown or division and propagation by seed. However, growing from seed takes much longer to mature and is less reliable than crowns. Crowns are young-rooted plants that have been stored, harvested, shipped to be replanted and cleaned. For best yields, it is suggested that you prune while leaving a few runners to spread your own strawberry crown.

Frequently Asked Questions