Flourishing strawberry plants in a basket

Growing from seed is tough and takes ages. You’re better off buying small plants from a local friendly garden centre.

Strawberries can be grown in almost any soils, from light sand to heavy clay. Watch out for water-logging which will cause the fruits to become diseased and the plant to rot.

The ideal soil is well-drained and rich in humus (humus is generally something like well rotted or composted manure, or organic matter in the soil. IT IS NOT a Greek dip. Don’t put a chick pea and garlic based dip in your strawberries!). They prefer to be planted in full sun, out of the wind.

If you put them in hanging baskets, make sure they are nice big baskets because they’ll need to hold lots of water because strawberries love water. If your basket doesn’t come with a liner, buy one! Then fill it with a general purpose compost. Also, you can buy water retaining gel to mix into the soil with the strawberries too if you want. This just holds more water in the soil structure after you water it. IF you don’t want to use the water retaining stuff you can mix in compost or rotted horse manure instead.

Make sure they get LOTS of sun, and water them regularly, you can also feed them regularly too, with general purpose plant food, (I’ve had good results with tomato feed, every two weeks during the summer).You may need to place a net over the plants to prevent birds and squirrels from eating the strawbs.

When it starts fruiting, check every other day and pick any ripe strawberries and eat them up yum.

Champagne goes well with strawberries!