Growing Your Own Strawberries in Five Easy Steps
Starting your own strawberry plant can be exciting, and it can be a great way to have your own fresh, strawberries. Whether, you want to use them for smoothies or just eat them separately, it can be fun to have your own supply. Growing a strawberry plant can be a straightforward process. You just need to make sure that you follow the right steps, and set your new plant up for success.
1) Find the Right Home for Your New Plant: First off, you need to decide on a home for your strawberries, and where you want to grow them. If you are starting with strawberry seeds, you can use a small pot or even a cup. You can always transfer the plant once the strawberry seeds grow. When starting with a nursery strawberry plant, it is generally a good idea to transfer the plant and grow it in a new planter. Nursery plants often come in small, plastic containers, and it is easy for a growing plant to get overcrowded in them. If you are planning to grow the strawberry plant outside, you can plant them in a raised garden bed, outdoor planters, or other places in your yard suitable for gardening.
2) Decide on a Spot to Grow Strawberries: After you have found a home for your strawberry plant, you need to then find a good spot to grow it, so that the plant can be nourished properly. When it comes to sunlight levels, strawberries generally grow better and flourish with a lot of sunlight, and this can cause them to have bigger harvests and more of them. Low light settings can work too for more developed plants, but the plants might grow slower, depending on the location, since strawberries tend to prefer a lot of light. With low light setups, you might also get fewer or smaller strawberry harvests, since the strawberries may not grow as quickly.
3) Figure Out a Watering Schedule: Third, you have to figure out a watering schedule for the plant. Strawberries tend to thrive with more frequent watering, compared to other plants, and they generally like a lot of moisture. However, you still have to be careful to avoid overwatering. To keep the strawberry plant in optimal growing conditions, water until the top layer of soil is moist. Depending on the soil you use and other factors, the amount of watering needed can vary, but generally the goal is to soak through the first 2 - 5 inches of soil. If you are growing the strawberries in a pot, make sure the pot can properly drain excess water too, to prevent the plant roots from rotting.
4) Consider Adding Protection: This next step can be skipped if you plan on growing strawberries indoors, and this step is mainly for protecting outdoor strawberry plants from local wildlife. While you might like strawberries yourself, so do many common kinds of animals and insects. The kind of protection that works best will depend on the local wildlife in you area. With this step, the goal is to add protection for your harvests. Mesh netting, for example, can be used to keep pests or birds away from your fresh strawberries. Instead of mesh netting, you can also try and make decoy strawberries to trick birds into leaving your strawberries alone. To do so, simply find a bunch of pebbles and paint them to look like strawberries. With any luck, birds will mistakenly peck the decoy strawberries and leave your harvests alone. In addition to birds, there are many kinds of bugs that might go after your harvests too. For other ideas and approaches on managing pests, check out this post.
5) Watch Your New Plant Grow: The last step is to watch your new strawberry plant grow! If you follow the above steps, your new plant will likely have no problem growing, and you should eventually start to get regular harvests. If you notice any problems with your strawberry plant along the way, try to correct them as they appear. Newer strawberry plants in particular can be more sensitive to both overwatering and under-watering, but if given enough time your new plant will flourish and adapt to its new home, and you'll be left with plenty of strawberries for your next bowl of yogurt.
