Henny Penny Farmette

These luscious strawberries thrive in raised beds

One of the easiest plants to grow, strawberries reward you with ripe, red, luscious fruit as early as April in California and Florida, and a couple of months later for the rest of the country.

I’ve planted dozens of strawberry plants in four-by-six- foot boxes that have a depth of around 12 inches. Most strawberry plants spread through runners. These runners are long, thin shoots that have leaves at their tips. Where the tips touch the soil, they root. The roots create daughter plants from the mother plants. This is good because you want to rejuvenate the beds to keep yields high. Otherwise, you’ll need to start with new plants every few seasons.

Strawberry plants love full sun and a sandy-loamy type of soil with good drainage.They need about an inch of water per week. If there is too much water and the drainage is not adequate, your berries may develop gray mold that rots the berries. The best way to deal with gray mold is to monitor the growing bed, keep it weed free, and pluck off any damaged or moldy fruit.

You’ll find four basic types of strawberries to choose from when you purchase your plants. June bearing berries produce their main crop in June with early, mid-season, and late-season cultivars.

Ever-bearing produce  the main crop in June and a smaller crop in late August and otherwise produce a few berries throughout the summer. They have runners but far fewer than the June bearing berries that generate lots of runners that rapidly spread throughout the berry bed or box.

Day-neutrals are productive from June through August or until frost in Northern areas of the United States. Alpine  strawberry plants produce smaller berries through summer until frost and have no runners.

I love home-grown berries. They are not necessarily as large as commercially grown strawberries, but mine are organic and the crop as bountiful as I want. There are enough berries to fill my morning bowl of yogurt, nuts, and honey and sometimes even enough berries to make jam. They are so easy to grow, I’ve planted two big earth boxes of them and am adding two more this year.