I challenge you to find a strawberry that tastes anywhere near as good as one you've grown yourself. In fact I'll let you into a little secret, you can't. Strawberries can be grown just about anywhere, in the ground, in pots and dangling down seductively
from hanging baskets. And with a few tips of the
trade they're super easy too. If you want to grow perfect, sweet, juicy, aromatic strawberries every time you've come to the right place. Welcome to our Strawberry Growing Masterclass. Look at these little beauties. We're going to get these planted in a moment, but first let's just take a look at the
different types of strawberries you can grow. I want to be sure I can pick
strawberries for as long as possible and that means growing a selection of varieties that together will crop over an extended period. Now for this purpose strawberries
are divided into three main types: Summer fruiting or June bearing strawberries tend to produce their fruits all in one go over a period of about 2 to 3 weeks. Now within this group they're divided into
early mid and late season fruiting strawberries, which will crop anytime from
early summer to late summer and even spring if you're in a warmer climate. Then there are our ever bearers, also known
as perpetual or all season strawberries. These guys tend to crop on
and off throughout the summer and even in to early autumn. If you're after a steady supply of
strawberries to pick kind of as and when then this might be the choice for you. If on the other hand you're after
lots of strawberries all at once for making say jams, then those June bearers or summer fruiting
strawberries would be more your thing. Closely related to the ever bearers
are day neutral strawberries, so called because they aren't
affected by day length. These will produce their tempting
berries throughout the growing season in a small but steady supply. Separate from all of the above, kind
of in a little world of their own are the Alpine and wild strawberries. I've got them here growing out
of the cracks in this stone wall. Now these have a really really intense
flavor although the berries are very small, but they're perfect dainty berries
for topping say your porridge. Now as the name implies these are easier to
look after than the largest strawberry plants and they'll grow just about anywhere as a beautiful edging plant or as here,
growing out the cracks of your wall. Some strawberry varieties have an
incredible resistance to pests and diseases or an award-winning reliability, quite literally, earning themselves either an
all America selection or a Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit. If you're new to strawberry growing or are just bewildered by the sheer
number of varieties out there promising all sorts of benefits, well then
these might not be a bad place to start. And here's that same list ordered
according to ripening period. Pick one or two from each column and you'll
have yourself the perfect all-season selection. Strawberries will grow just about anywhere, but you'll get the best results,
meaning sweeter, more fragrant fruits and more of them if you aim for a minimum of 6 hours of sunshine or eight or more if you're aiming for perfection. I'm going to be turning over
one of my beds to strawberries and just to help things get off to a raring start I'm popping in a couple of buckets
of really well rotted manure. Now you could just use garden
compost, something like that, for a bit of extra organic goodness. And then for good measure, just
a handful of blood fish and bone. Now this is a balanced organic fertilizer. If you're uh looking for something vegan there
are kind of labeled brand alternatives available. Just look for something that's
balanced and of course organic. And I'm just going to fork this in so
Rosie doesn't start munching at it, cause you're a bit of a mischief
sometimes aren't you, with this stuff. And here are our plants. Now these are potted strawberries, but you can also find bare root
strawberries, also sold as runners. Now these offer really excellent value for money. They look pretty shocking though, with next to
no leaves and really rather scraggly affairs, but don't let that put you off. Once you get them into the
soil they'll be well away. Many commercial growers plant their
strawberries through black plastic. This helps to warm the soil early in the season. It retains moisture, suppresses weeds and it
keeps the strawberries off the muddy soil. You can mimic this at home by using old
compost or potting mix sacks like this. Just open them out along the seams and then have the black side facing up and then secure it in at the sides, tucking
it in and using pins to hold it all in place. And then to plant all you have to do is
cut a slit an X-shaped slit like this and then fold back the flaps like that. Pop your strawberry plant in and then
fold it back neatly around the plant. I'm not that keen on using plastic directly
on the soil for prolonged periods of time, and besides, slugs can
potentially lurk underneath. So a plastic free alternative
is to use strawberry mats made from natural materials like coir or coconut fiber, but just make sure they are wide enough
to cover the entire width of the plant. Believe it or not, some aren't. They can be on the pricey side though so an excellent alternative is to
use the strawberry namesake, straw. And I just think that looks
a lot more attractive too. There's room in this bed for around six plants, which leaves about 45 cm or 18 inches
between plants in each direction. Now getting the right depth is important and that's very easy for container
grown strawberry plants like this because they're planted at the same depth as
they were in in their nursery pot like that. But for bare root plants we need
to be a little more careful. For bare root plants it's really important to make
sure you don't plant them too deep or too shallow. Too deep and the plant could
potentially just rot away and too shallow and it'll wave about
in the wind and dry out really easy, creating a brittle and weak plant. You want to plant it so that the
crown, that's where the leaves emerge, sits ever so slightly proud of the soil like this. These plants are going in right
next to my bed of garlic over there and would you believe it, garlic is the
perfect companion plant of strawberries. It doesn't just keep vampires away, it helps
to do to deter many pests such as spider mites. Now you might find our Garden
Planner useful for this very purpose. If you select the plant that you're interested
in and click the Companion Planting button it will suggest perfect companions for that crop. As these plants are going to remain
relatively small in this first season I'm going to interplant
them with even more garlic. Now this lot was started off
in the greenhouse in the autumn but they're big enough to plant outside now, so let's get them in between. Wonderful stuff. I'll add the straw around these plants later on in spring once they've grown on a
bit and are starting to flower. That way I won't smother them. With their compact habit and quick cropping, strawberries make an excellent
choice for container growing, meaning that anyone can grow them. I've grown them very successfully
in wide, shallow contain containers and I've also tried them in hanging baskets, where
the fruits hang down inviting you to pick them. Now you can sometimes grow them in strawberry
planters like this, but I'm not so keen on them. I'm finding that when I water, the compost
or potting mix just kind of gets blasted out, exposing the strawberry like this so it sort
of rocks about and dries out even quicker. For this reason I'd avoid these or choose
strawberry planters with cupped planting pockets, or perhaps a strawberry tower. I'm going to put together a
strawberry cascade instead. I'll just move you there Rosie. And it uses three pots of
progressively smaller size. And to fill it I'm going to use a potting
mix that's an all-purpose potting mix that's been split 50/50 with
a soil-based potting mix and that will just give it a bit of body
and help it to stop slumping down so much. So to start I'm just going to half fill the largest container with our
potting mix, there we go. And now for our second pot. And just so we get everything nice and central I'm going to stick in this bamboo
cane just while we set things up. And then slide the pot down like that
through its central drainage point and that'll mean just keep it kind
of neat while we're filling it. And let's half fill this one and then our final pot, slide it on, there we are, and I'm going to fill this one mostly to the top. And now planting time. I'm going to plant three in the bottom tier, two in the middle tier and one in the top. We've got a nice three tiered effect now. You might need to just kind of split
it apart a bit like that, the roots, just to kind of slide it in. Now obviously we're planting a lot closer
than we did in the ground over there but that's absolutely fine because in containers
they can be planted a little bit closer like this. Ah. There's a little C-shaped grub which
is a tell-tale sign of vine weevil. That is a real pest problem of potted plants, so if you find them just remove
them and well get rid of them and hopefully it won't cause any damage. Right, and then two plants
for our middle tier here and then finally one plant right here in the top. There we go, that looks alright doesn't it? It doesn't look like much now but
these plants will soon bulk out and by summer they'll be cropping and should create a really
beautiful visual effect. Now growing strawberries like this
will raise them up off the ground so the strawberries themselves
are much less likely to get muddy and they'll get a lot less
attention from slugs as well. Now you could take the same concept
and use for example colorful buckets, anything that graduates in size and where
you can make drainage holes in the bottom. The great tip with strawberries
is to keep them well watered while they are establishing and during dry weather and that is especially important for
container plants because obviously they won't be able to get their roots
down into the native soil down below. Once the plants are a bit
bigger and starting to fruit do try and aim your water at the base of plants so you're not wetting the fruits which might
lead to problems like sort of mould on them. Once my strawberry plants start to flower I will water them with a high
potassium liquid tomato feed, which will help to encourage those
fruits to swell into their gorgeousness. And then early in spring I will tickle
in a general purpose organic fertilizer just to help power plants up
for the coming growing season. Do take the time to mulch
around your strawberry plants. As I said, I will be using straw and putting
it around once the plants have grown on a bit. The straw will really help to keep
those fruits nice and blemish free. Then it will be removed at the end of
the season so I can go in and tidy up the old plants by cutting away all the
old foliage and dead seaves and so on so they can sit nicely over the winter. Now if you haven't got straw you could
use something like dried grass clippings. Watch out for birds. Netting is one option to keep them
physically off your ripening fruits but just make sure it's in place before
the fruits start to really color up. Another some might say genius alternative is to
paint strawberry sized rocks a bright red color and then nestle these in amongst your plants
and in the lead up to fruit ripening time. Now the theory is that birds will
come down, peck at the strawberries, find its rock hard and get a rude awakening
and then disappear and not return. Has anyone tried this? Let
me know in the comments. Another idea to keep the birds off
is to just feed the fruits in here as they're just about to start ripening
up to protect them from those birds and have it in such a way
that the rain can't get in. This will also create a nice warm
microclimate for those fruits to ripen. The other pest to watch out for is slugs. Now if the hole in the strawberry has kind of got sharpish angles that's likely
to be a bird pecking at it, but if the hole's slightly rounded
that's more likely to be slugs. So to control them set up beer traps as
your fruits start to turn a pinkish color and keep the beer topped up and empty regularly. Slugs are especially a problem in wetter climates, which is why it's not a good idea
to put your mulch down too early. Now sometimes you'll see a hole
with pill bugs or woodlice in them. They haven't created the hole, the slugs have, and then the woodlice or pill bugs are taking
advantage of the opportunity created for them. So take care of the slugs and then
they won't make an appearance. Now for more tips on organic natural
slug control do check out our video on that which I've linked to down in the description. Also watch out early in the season for sudden
frosty weather when your plants are flowering. Now strawberries are super hardy
but the flowers themselves can turn to a blacken mush if they get a hard frost so if it's going to be a bit chilly just cover
them over with something nice and warming like this nice thick fleecy row cover for example. The real joy of growing your
own strawberries is that you can pick them at the absolute peak of perfection. Never again will you have to put up
with hard insipid fruits like these, you know the ones with this nasty band
of white where it hasn't fully ripened. These are a thing of history. Pick strawberries in the warmth of the afternoon
sun if you can for that really developed aroma. Now strawberries will store
really well in the fridge but the cold does knock back the flavor a bit so bring them out to warm up before you eat them. Strawberries produce lots of thin
wiry stems called runners and we can use these to our advantage
to grow more strawberry plants. Now this is very simple, it's just a question of pinning them down
into the soil or a pot of potting mix and then once they've rooted you can
cut them free from the mother plant. Now that's what I've been doing here and I'm going
to have a few more strawberry plants as a result. Producing more strawberries like this is
really simple to do and Incredibly satisfying. Do check out our video on that. Unless you're actively wanting to grow more plants then I would suggest removing those runners because that will concentrate
the plant's energy into bulking itself out and of course
producing those luscious fruits. And I would say don't let any runners form
in at least the first season for this reason. That all said, as as plants become
older they do become less productive, so using runners is a great way to replace them. Strawberries are also quite
easy to start from seed. Look at these guys here. These were sown about a month ago and then grown
on under grow lights to bring them on a bit. And then after I pricked them
out into their own plug trays they've come out here and they're
growing along really nicely. I think I surprised myself actually with
just how quick and easy they were to grow. Now these are of an everbearing
or perpetual variety, but I figured I might sow myself some more Alpine strawberries which I can then
use as edging to my flower beds. So I've got my pot here of just
saved seed starting mix and I'm just going to scatter the seeds
very finely over the top like that. There we are. And there's no need to cover them
because they need light to germinate. And then to water them I'm going to
use this pump action mist sprayer here and that will avoid disturbing the seeds. If you haven't got one of
these then maybe water the potting mix before sowing your seeds
so you don't sort of dislodge them. There we go. Now this is going to go
inside into the warm to germinate, then once the seedlings are up they
will go into their own plugs or pots and they'll be safe to come back out here as well. I'll then grow them on and
then plant them out in spring. While we're here by the way, let me
just show you these plants here that I potted up and brought in here about a week ago. Now this is called 'forcing' because I'm
bringing on an extra extra early harvest by just adding a little bit of extra
warmth, courtesy of the greenhouse here. These will fruit at least two weeks and as much
as 4 weeks earlier than strawberries outside. Then once they have finished flowering
I'll plant them back outside where they will have that much more leg room
and will be easier to look after. Do check out this video next to get the
low down on growing more strawberries and share your tips for growing the best strawbs. I'll catch you next time.
