advice on growing strawberries

teapot2

Someone has given me 3 strawberry plants from their garden - nice I looked at the strawberry pots in B&Q yesterday - the ones with little pockets at the side but they are expensive. Was wondering if its ok to grow them in ordinary pots? Anything I should do specially ie plant near side of pot [or not] - how much space do they need? I am in Scotland near Edinburgh on the coast so its quite cold and windy and my garden has loads of slugs so don't want to put them in the garden itself. Any advice would be appreciated.

Ta Teapot

Bossyboots

I grow mine in an ordinary garden tub (well three actually). I just put them in and off they went. By using tubs rather than the garden it is easier to protect them from slugs and birds and all I do each year is feed them with a generic plant food.

At the end of the season they will put out runners. These are stems that have minature plants along them. You can peg the base of the minature plants into the soil, they will put out roots and you will have some more plants. Once the off shoot is established, you cut the stem from the "mother" plant. This means that every year you can increase your stock and remove tired plants if necessary.

Biddyrolo

If you use pots it's easier to tuck netting underneath as the blimmin' mice will pinch your strawbs given half a chance.

teapot2

Anyone got any thoughts on whether to plant one strawb plant per pot in the middle or can I do 2, one at either side nearer the edge?

Bossyboots

teapot2 wrote:

Anyone got any thoughts on whether to plant one strawb plant per pot in the middle or can I do 2, one at either side nearer the edge?

They don't need vast amounts of space but how many you put together is going to depend entirely on the size of your pot. I have about 10 plants in a 12 inch tub.

richyrich7

You can deter slugs and snails from climbing your pots by wrapping copper wire around them about half way up they wont cross copper, or you can buy a copper self adhesive tape to stick on.

nanamags

I grew strawberries last summer for the first time. As all the slugs in the North West visit my garden I grew them in a large hanging basket. This was quite succesful and the strawberries tasted delicious. The plants I bought were frozen and they produced fruits within 60 days as promised. I bought these at The BBC Gardeners Live show at the NEC.

teapot2

Might try that then as it might defeat the slugs and snails in my garden - am sure they have crampons and climbing boots :rotfl:

stilernin

Strawberries will produce runners, (new plants), every year.

If you have three plants put them in a 10"ish pot. Place this pot on top of a larger pot of compost, pyramid style.

At the end of this year you will have runners from your original three which will hang down and root into the larger pot.

Next spring, put these two pots on top of an even larger pot and the new runners will fall and root into this third pot.

You can continue to a fourth pot the following year if you can find an even larger pot.

This works better than 'strawberry pots' as they retain the water better when watered from the top pot.

When the fruit is ripening, it is best to cover in netting to keep the birds off.

This system works really well and is easier to keep watered than the 'strawberry towers' that can be bought/

teapot2

Thanks Stilernin - that sounds like a great idea. I did look at the strawberry pots but they were nearly £13 in B+Q :eek: will have a go at your suggestion.

Cheers
Teapot

stilernin

Just had an MSE thought.......... discarded builders buckets with holes punched in their bottoms would do for one of the levels............. to be a good gardener you have to look around for what you might be thowing out........ to be a great gardener, you have to look around for what others are throwing out......... skips are great!!