Do you grow strawberries at home, or would you like to try? Today at Bless My Weeds we are going to talk about the mistakes you don’t want to make when planting strawberries. There are actually some pretty common mistakes gardeners make with their strawberry plants and have no idea they’re making them. Making these common mistakes may not ruin your strawberry crop, but they can definitely impact the amount of strawberries you’re able to harvest from your plants. And strawberries are too delicious to unwittingly sacrifice any of them!
The first common mistake that gardeners make when planting strawberries pertains to the crown of the plant. {Did you know strawberries have a crown?} The crown is located where the plants emerge from the root ball. You need to plant the strawberry plant so that where the stems emerge is completely visible. If you cover up any part of the crown, the plant will eventually rot and then die. Be careful not to expose so much of the crown that any roots are visible. If any roots are visible, you haven’t covered the plant enough.
Another mistake you should not make with your strawberry plants is not mulching them. Strawberry plants require mulch, and lots of it. They love to grow in soil that is continually moist, and mulching is the step that helps you keep the soil from drying out. As you can see from the picture of the strawberry field, straw works as a mulch for strawberry plants. So does bark and dry leaves.
One of the biggest mistakes gardeners make when growing strawberries is not removing runners. Any “mother” strawberry plant will send out runner plants that are the beginnings of new strawberry plants. A mother plant can handle three runners without it depleting the nutrients the mother plant needs to produce berries, so leaving one to three runners on a plant is acceptable. But any additional runners the plant sends out should be snipped off close to the mother.
Never make these three mistakes, and you’ll be ready to have the best strawberry crop you’ve ever had!
