Growing Strawberries in the Home Garden
Friday June 23, 2006
Strawberries may be available all year, but fresh locally grown strawberries signal the summer season. Day neutral and everbearing strawberries have been getting all the attention, but there still is no season like June for fresh strawberries. These are one of the easiest fruit crops for the home gardener to grow and one of the most rewarding.
Comments
Hi Marie! I would like to know if pinestraw is a good thing to use under my strawberry plant? Last year I only had it planted in soil with no mulch. All the strawberries rotted off the vines. Need help before the berries I have do the same this year. Thank you in advance.
Hi Linda, pine needles make an excellent mulch for strawberries.
Your berries might have succumbed to a rotting disease called gray mold, which happens a lot in damp or humid conditions. Keeping the berries off the ground certainly helps. So does cleaning up all infected plant debris and keeping the plants from being overcrowded.
Hi Marie! I need some help with my June-bearing strawberries. I only have a few that have matured this year. The vast majority are tiny and discolored; they never even grew. Can you tell me what caused this? I have had good success with the patch for some years now. I have fertilized once a month with a granular, all-purpose fertilizer for the past three months. They may be over-crowded. They are quite close to some mint and lemon balm. My only problems in the past have been what I believe to be leaf-spot in the humid warmth of summers after fruiting. Thank you!
Overcrowding can cause smaller berries, because of the competition for nutrients.
It also sounds like the crowding may be causing a lack of good air flow around the plants. Discolored and stunted strawberries usually have some type of fungus disease.
Spraying now won’t help this season’s crop, but cleaning up the patch will get it ready for next year.
spraying my straberries for weeds.what can Iuse
Shari, I don’t know of any weed killer that won’t kill the strawberries too. You can paint the weed leaves with one of the vinegar based weed killers. If you don’t get it on the strawberries, they won’t be hurt. It doesn’t get into the soil.
But you’re best bet is to hand pull and then mulch. If it’s really bad, you might want to simply start over. It’s sad, but a lot easier.