Strawberry Success Solution

Strawberries are my favorite crop and I have several success solutions for growing organic strawberries. I love those fresh ripe strawberries harvested from my garden. They taste far better than the store bought ones.

What does an organic strawberry plant mean to me? It means from the very beginning the plants are grown in fertile, nourishing organic soil.  And, absolutely no chemicals are used in growing them.

Here’s some of my tips for growing healthy and delicious strawberry plants:

Just before you plant your strawberries, give them a bath with this root-rousin’ tonic. It will do an excellent job plumping up those dried-out roots and getting them ready, willing, and able to take off in a flash.

Ingredients: 1 can of beer
1/2 cup cold coffee
2 tbsp. of dishwashing liquid
2 gal. of water

Instructions: Mix these ingredients in a bucket, and soak your berries, bare roots in the solution for about 10 minutes before you tuck them into their holes. When you are finished planting, dribble the leftover solution on the soil around your plants.

Haste Makes Waste?

Not when it comes to planting your strawberry plants! It is best to set out your strawberry plants as soon as they arrive. If you must hold them for a day or two, keep them wrapped in the same plastic in which they arrived, and put them in your refrigerator. Or, keep them in as cool a place as you can find, like a basement.

Helpful Things To Know About Growing Strawberries

First and foremost is that they don’t compete with weeds well.

Second: in order to grow plump and juicy, they need plenty of water and nutrients plus excellent drainage. Their need for water is compounded by their shallow root system that can dry out easily.

The third thing: is that while the strawberry loves water, the moistness is also very attractive to ground bugs like mealy bugs and earwigs. These little bugs like to hollow out homes for themselves in the berries. The abundance of water can also cause ripening fruit to rot where it touches the ground.

Fourth is that the fruit is tastiest when it fully ripens on the plant. Unfortunately, this is also the stage the birds tend to come in and swipe them right out from under you.

A Berry Good Mulch

Oak leaves are especially good for mulching strawberries. Their bitter taste deters slimy slugs and grazing grubs. They also won’t pack down like softer leaves, such as maple.

Here’s a Great Idea…

Do you want to speed up production in your strawberry patch?

Then remove the blooms that appear six to seven weeks after planting by snapping them off at the stem. Why? Because this allows the plants to grow much faster and produce runners more readily. The result? A huge harvest the following year!

When You Plant:  set the middle of the crown just barely beneath the soil surface and water. It is important that you not plant the crown too high,or your plants may dry out.

If you plant too low in the soil, the plants may rot.

Want to know more?

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Yours truly for a great garden with outstanding berries,veggies and flowers.

Polly-organic gardener

Tagged as: growing strawberries, strawberry plants