Top Tips You Need To Grow Strawberries In Your Home Garden

Who wouldn't want juicy, delicious strawberries straight off the plant in their garden? Because the natural sugar in berries starts to convert to starch as soon as they are collected, supermarket berries are often acidic and have a gritty feel. Growing strawberries in home gardens is simple. So, why not grow your own berries and enjoy the flavour of the fresh fruit straight from the garden? Learn how to grow strawberries in your home garden with the help of this guide.

Read more: Strawberries Beyond Dessert: 7 Creative Recipes To Make The Most Out of the Season

• You must stratify the strawberry seeds before you start planting them. This essentially implies allowing the seeds to cool down to aid in germination. For three to four weeks, place the entire seed pack in the freezer (not a deep freezer).
• Take them out of the freezer once they've cooled down and let the seeds come to room temperature.
• Plant seeds sparingly in seed starter trays, pushing them into a damp potting medium before sparingly covering them with a growth mix.
• Since strawberries require light to germinate, place the tray beneath the lights. It will take a few weeks for germination. It might take a week or six weeks for seeds to germinate, so be patient.
• Maintain a temperature range of 65 to 75 degrees Celsius for the seed tray. Keep the seeds from drying out. Maintain adequate ventilation to prevent damping.
• Growth lights should be kept two inches above the seedlings after they start to sprout.
• Plants that receive light from too far away from the seedlings become lanky and thin. Move the strawberries into bigger containers once the seedling has developed and formed three sets of real leaves (the cotyledon, or seed leaves, are the first to appear).
• Plants should be hardened off before being planted in the garden or outside containers.

Important Factors To Remember

Location

Strawberries grow nearly everywhere. Strawberries grow well in a variety of settings, including raised beds, containers, in-ground gardens, and interplanted areas that require ground cover. Additionally, their roots don't get very deep. Therefore, you may probably plant strawberries there if you can find a place for a container of any kind or set off a particular area of the yard.

Make sure your growing place receives at least six to eight hours of direct sun every day, as most strawberry plant varieties thrive in high levels of sunlight. Not all types can be interplanted in the same growth circumstances, so make sure you've chosen ones that are hardy to your area and double-check their care requirements.

Provide The Best Care

Because they can produce fruit throughout the entire season, strawberries are known as everbearers. They may also be summer-fruiting, with a single, large harvest period.

Give your plants well-draining soil that is fertilised with organic compost or fertiliser to promote the best possible development. Mulch around your plants to help keep weeds out of the way that may compete with your strawberries. As soon as you see weeds, remove them, and trim the strawberry plants' yellowing or browning leaves. This improves the amount of moisture and nutrients a plant can reach in its healthy leaves and fruits, which will increase the quality of your produce.

Harvesting

You may harvest strawberries as soon as they turn red (or white, depending on the kind you have). Even if they've overripened and become soft and mushy, they still work well in jams and other cooked fruit dishes.