Growing strawberries is satisfying, and you can yield a decent size based on the richness of your garden soil, the fertilizers, or hydroponic nutrient concoction used. Often, the size of your strawberries will have a lot to do with the variety you’ve chosen to grow!
To be honest, you can’t get impressive sized berries from any type of strawberry plant other than a June-bearing variety. Yes, if you’re growing your berries in the ground outside, you will only have a couple of weeks of fruit harvest from these plants per year.
Ever-bearing varieties do provide you with fresh berries sporadically through the warm months, but the berries are quite small because the plant’s focus is spread too thin. Instead of putting all of its energy into creating a few big fruits over a short span of time, it has to divide everything it’s got several times over.
Naturally, buying rooted starts gets expensive over time. They are also only available at certain times of the year.
Using what you already have in the backyard is a good way to achieving bigger berries overtime.
Learning how to root your own strawberry starts from the runners on the mother plants will allow you to grow successive crops and enjoy big, juicy berries in all seasons. Granted, this means not growing in the soil. Containers and hydroponic growing suit strawberries very well.
The video below shows you a super simple method to grow your own strawberry starts in a way that is suitable for any type of growing.
The time to get runners for rooting is not long after the harvest. The minute fruiting is done, your mother plants focus all their energy on reproducing their species, which, in a strawberry’s case, is done with runners – baby plants on life support through mom until strong enough to grow on their own.
What if your mother plants are in the ground? Modifying Sleestak’s method wouldn’t be difficult; using small 3″-4″ nursery pots as a bridge comes to mind. You just need to keep the rooting pouches out of the dirt and mud.
Also, if you’re going to put your newly-rooted berry plants in a hydroponic system, it would be smarter to substitute his Miracle-Gro fertilizer choice with a nutrient solution.
Humongous berry image: Finn River Farm
Last updated by Catherine Sherriffs on 05/21/2020.