How To Grow Strawberries From Bare Root From Start To Finish

good evening everybody it's Tuesday March 17th and it's a really dreary rainy day out and that's perfect because today I'm going to plant some bare-root strawberries now this is not my first rodeo with bare-root strawberries they are a very affordable way of purchasing strawberries and in here I have a box full of Quinault strawberries that I ordered online for just a couple of dollars and when you purchase bare-root strawberries they're going to come in basically a bag like this and they're going to be completely dried out and they're going to have the green tops of the strawberries exposed and you can see them all here these actually look really nice and fresh but they are very dry and there are a few tricks of the trade when it comes to planting bare-root strawberries so you'll be successful and if you'll see right here I have two five-gallon buckets this is half full of water just plain water right out of the tap and this is slightly moistened potting soil that is mostly coco coir so it's very nice and fluffy and it will hold water very well so the first thing that you want to do and this is technically an optional step but you will get better results in general is you want to hydrate these bare-root strawberries because they're going to come pretty dry so I'm going to remove this rubber band and I'm going to take these and I'm going to simply separate them and you want to be pretty gentle because you don't want to rip up the roots too badly you want to pull these apart now it's going to be quite difficult to pull these apart because they come intertwine but if you're persistent they will come apart so all you want to do is simply drop these in the water bath to rehydrate them and now that they've all been separated I'm going to submerge all of these by simply taking my hand and pushing them all in and then I'm going to simply set these buckets aside I'm going to let that sit from anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes to hydrate back up and I'm going to get out some trays because I'm going to choose to start my bare-root strawberries in containers you don't have to you can plant them directly in the ground but I find that starting these and containers makes them a little bit more manageable I can start them in my greenhouse to give them extra heat that we're not quite getting yet at this point in the year and it allows for much easier transplanting later let me start by saying that I love bare-root strawberries because they're an incredibly affordable way to grow strawberry plants I bought 25 plants and they only cost me about ten dollars so they're incredibly affordable however you need to set them up correctly because if you do not set them up they will all rot and fail so it's very important that you know what you're doing before you begin this procedure in front of me I have three and a half inch wide by three and a half inch long by three and a half inch deep pots and I recommend that you do not go any smaller than this this is about as small as you want to go if you can go a little bit larger that's even better because the bare-root strawberries root systems tend to be pretty advanced so you need a good bit of room for the root system to sprawl out the second thing that you'll notice is that I only filled each container about a third of the way up the side it's a very light and fluffy mix and I did not compact it down and the reason why is because the roots are going to take up quite a bit of room and you're going to have to press down and you're really going to have to shift the roots around to fit in your container pretty well so you're going to have to add soil on top of the root mass now here we have our pots all set up and prepped so I'm going to reach into my water bucket and I'm going to grab a good example bare root straw and this looks like a pretty darn good example right here so this right here is what a bare root strawberry look slike with the strawberry you have the root mass down here and then you have the top here which is the crown this is where the green growth is all going to come out of this is going to be where your strawberry plant comes out and this is a pretty obvious example right here now the thing about bare-root strawberries and this is going to determine whether or not you're successful with doing this is that you absolutely cannot bury the crown you have to keep the crown above the soil level so if you look right here here is where the crown begins you cannot bury any of that the soil level has to stop right here at the tops of the roots and this entire green section that you see here that must stick out of the soil 100% so we'll use this container here as an example it's about a third of the way full so we're going to take our roots and we are simply going to put them inside of the container but we are going to make absolutely sure that they stick out above that the crown sticks above the soil so I'm simply going to take this and I'm going to add handfuls of soil and I'm going to press it around the roots again making absolute certainty sure that we do not bury the crown if you bury the crown under the soil it will rot and your plants will fail they absolutely must stay elevated so that's why you don't want to take your your containers and fill them up too much because it's easier to simply add your soil like this and then pick up the crown a little bit and then just simply elevate it above the soil level once you compact it a little bit so once you have the crown where you want it to be then you can simply press the soil down a little bit so here you can see what the bare-root strawberries should look like once you're done and this is exactly what you want to see you want to see that crown fully exposed above the soil level so each one of these only takes about 20 seconds to pot up once you get a rhythm down it goes really quickly so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to pot up all the rest of my bare-root strawberries in the exact same way I just showed you all of the bare-root strawberries have been potted up and one of the things that I love about buying bare-root strawberries is the companies usually always toss in extra I paid for 25 but I got 28 so I have a handful of extra in case some of them decide not to root and do fail now that they've all been up potted I'm going to water in all of the soil in two different lifts the first brief watering is just going to be to moisten things I'm going to let them sit for a few minutes and then I'm going to water them in again and now that they've all been watered in I'm going to let them sit out here for about half an hour to drain completely and then I'm going to carry them into my greenhouse and here are all of my bare-root strawberries inside the greenhouse and strawberries despite being very cold hardy actually respond well to higher temperatures and humidity here in the spring the higher temperatures and the humidity that will be provided in this greenhouse will have these bare-root strawberries coming to life pretty quickly one point that I really want to drive home is how the Crown's must stick above the dirt so when I plant my strawberries I make absolutely sure that I can see the very tops of those roots here you can see the very tops of those roots sticking up and that's how you know that you are safe with your placement the tops of the roots should just barely be visible so here is the crown if any of that is buried it is going to rot so if you are unsure as to how high to plant your strawberry crowns always err on the side of caution it's better to be a little bit high than a little bit low and if you can see the very tops of the roots you know that you should be pretty safe from rot and here we are two and a half weeks later on Sunday April 5th this is about what all of your bare-root strawberries should look like two and a half weeks later and overall I'm really happy with the success rate of these bare-root strawberries out of the 28 that we did get 24 of them took root and here you can see this full tray took root everything looks great and here are the remainder and you can see back here there are four that didn't take and this is to be expected you can expect something like 10% of them are going to fail that's why they give you additional and I paid for I think 24 they gave me 28 and it looks like that I got all 24 that I actually paid for so overall that's a pretty good success rate and what you can expect from bare-root strawberries everyone thank you all so much for watching today's video if you found it helpful please hit that like button give it a thumbs up and if you haven't already subscribed to the channel please subscribe for future updates and more videos like these if you're curious about anything that I use in my garden everything that I use is a linked in the Amazon storefront in the video description thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 185,739

Keywords: how to grow strawberries from bare root, how to grow strawberries, grow strawberries, strawberries bare root, grow, strawberries, bare, root, bare root, bare roots, bare root strawberries, growing strawberries, how to plant strawberry roots, planting strawberries, strawberry plants, growing strawberry plants from bare roots, growing strawberry plants, strawberry patch, grow strawberries in containers, grow strawberries in pots, garden, gardening, The millennial gardener

Id: Gj-W5HCMsMs

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020