HOW to PLANT and GROW STRAWBERRIES plus TIPS for growing strawberries in HOT CLIMATES

Strawberries are one of my favorite crops to pick and enjoy right in the garden. The flavor of a fresh picked strawberry is so good. In today's video I'm going to give you my best tips for growing strawberries and I'll even include a few extra tips if you live in a hot climate like the low desert of Arizona. The first thing to know about strawberries is that there are different types of strawberries and it's always best to pick the right strawberry for the location that June types of strawberries set one large crop of fruit typically in June and you get a large amount of fruit at once. Ever-bearing varieties of strawberries usually set fruit twice. Ever-bearing varieties to try are Quinault and White Carolina Pineberry. Day neutral strawberries are a type of ever-bearing strawberry and a good choice for most climates and they aren't affected by day length. They bear full-size fruit all season. Tristar and Tribute are two varieties of day neutral. Pick the right variety of strawberries for your climate. The second tip for growing strawberries is to plant them at the right time. Strawberries are frost sensitive. You need to wait until after danger of frost is passed in the spring before planting strawberries. Strawberries ideal growing temperatures are between 35 and 85 degrees. My third tip is to choose the right spot for growing strawberries. Strawberries need rich well-draining soil. Strawberry roots can often grow up to 12 inches long. Amend the soil with plenty of organic matter before you plant. Now it's time to plant. You can plant strawberries from strawberry plants and you can also plant from crowns. Trim those roots to about four inches long and soak in compost tea. Plant your strawberries about 12 inches apart. I love square foot gardening. Put one strawberry plant in the middle of each square. The most important thing when you're planting your strawberry plant is not to bury the crown of the strawberry plant. That crown is the growing point where everything is going to grow out of and if you bury that it will smother the plant. Strawberries respond really well to mulching. Mulching strawberries helps keep that moisture in the soil and it keeps the strawberries from drying out. It also keeps the leaves and the stems up off the ground. It regulates the soil temperature and keeps the weeds down. The other great thing about mulch is it provides a barrier between the soil and the berries for those soil-borne pests like pill bugs. The next tip is to water strawberries deeply. Strawberry roots can grow about 12 inches so you want to make sure each time that you're watering strawberries you water them nice and deep and then let the top inch or two of soil dry out again before watering. This will encourage those roots to go nice and deep and to produce the best strawberry plants. Strawberries grown in poor draining soil don't grow as well and are more prone to pests and diseases. Strawberries produce beautiful big fruit and my next tip is all about feeding the strawberries. It's important to give strawberries adequate nutrition. When you see the buds appear it's a great time to give them more compost tea and a diluted liquid kelp fertilizer. Spraying strawberry plants with compost tea is a great way to give them an extra boost. If you can spray them each week with compost tea you're going to have beautiful strawberries. So once you've planted your strawberry plants and they're going it's tempting to let those first blooms become strawberries but for the health of the plant it's important to remove those blossoms for the first few months after planting. That way all of that energy is going to go into the roots and produce nice big healthy plants which will in turn produce nice big healthy strawberries. Think of the long game for your strawberry plant rather than that quick first strawberry. Another important thing to do is to remove the runners. Runners are shoots that come out of the crown of the plant and those produce new strawberry plants so you have to decide what your goal is. Is your goal to produce a lot of strawberry plants? If so let those runners root and a lot of the energy from that plant will go into producing more strawberry plants. If your goal is nice big strawberries remove all of those runners and let that strawberry plant focus on creating nice big strawberries instead of strawberry plants. Strawberries are perennial but they typically only last about three or four years. As you begin to see your strawberry harvest diminish it may be time to add new strawberry plants. Pick a different location in your garden and add strawberry plants to that new location. This tip is all about pests. Unfortunately we are not the only ones who like strawberries. There are a lot of pests that love to eat the strawberries. One important way to discourage pests is through the use of companion planting. One of my favorite companion pairings in the garden is to plant Itoi onions with my strawberries. Those onions help deter pests. Let's talk about some of those soil pests. What can we do to keep those bugs from eating the strawberries? Use something like mulch to get those strawberries up off the dirt. There are also strawberry supports you can buy that go in the ground and then lift those strawberries up and away from the soil. So the trick is to somehow get those strawberries up off the ground. The next pest that loves strawberries are birds. Birds are notorious for pecking those strawberries. Your best bet when trying to prevent birds from getting to your strawberries are barrier methods. You need to create some kind of barrier between the bird and the strawberry. They have cloches. You can put netting over the top. Some kind of method to keep the birds out. Some people have success painting rocks red before the berries get ripe. That way the birds will think maybe they're red rocks. I haven't tried that method but the birds have been horrible this year so I may give that method a try. Now let's talk about harvesting. Strawberries won't get any sweeter once picked so you want to leave the strawberries on long enough to get a nice deep red. You're looking for a nice shiny strawberry. Once those berries begin to get dull they're probably over ripe. Cut the strawberries off the plant rather than pulling. Pulling the strawberries off can damage the crown. Leave the caps of the berries on the berries until you're ready to eat them. Once that cap is removed the strawberries deteriorate pretty quickly. If you see berries that are beginning to get rotten pick those off immediately and discard. We want to encourage that plant to continue producing nice big strawberries. Okay where are my low desert Arizona friends? These tips are for you. Growing strawberries in the low desert of Arizona is difficult but not impossible. There are a few tips that we have to keep in mind. First off is shade. Pick the best spot in your garden for those strawberries. They need to get lots of afternoon shade. Shade is one of the most important things you can provide. Because our summers get so hot you may have to replant strawberries each year. Some summers you may get lucky and they'll survive. The best time to plant strawberries here in the low desert is in the fall. Planting strawberries from about the middle of September through about the middle of November gives plants roots time to get established and to grow over the winter months. By the time summer comes those roots will have grown nice and deep. They're better able to withstand those high temperatures in the summer. Here in the low desert during the summer months you're probably going to need to water those strawberries just about every day. Strawberry plants are very salt sensitive. Arizona's salty soil and salty water can be an issue and occasionally water extra deep to leach those salts down lower into the soil. Mulching strawberry plants is especially important here in the low desert especially during the summer months. Give them several inches of a nice thick organic mulch. There are certain varieties of strawberries that do better here in the low desert of Arizona than other strawberries. Varieties to try are Camarosa, Chandler, Quinault, Sequoia, and Tioga. Another companion planting that I really like here in the low desert is adding asparagus. Those asparagus fronds will grow up and help shade those strawberry plants during the hottest months of the year. I also like adding sunflowers to my strawberry patch. Those sunflowers will grow up and give the strawberry plant even more shade. Those are my best tips for growing strawberries. Thank you so much for watching!