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We believe most fruit tastes better homegrown, but supermarket strawberries are one of those fruits that feel like a cruel joke compared to homegrown.
There’s nothing like the delicious, sweet little flavour bombs of your own fruit compared to watery, oversized, on-their-way-to-mouldy fruit from far away.
Strawberries: A Sweet, Quick Win for Your Garden
Strawberries are a great crop to grow with kids because the rewards come much faster than with a fruit tree. However, trying to convince little ones to wait until they’re ripe can be a challenge!
If you’ve never grown them before, why not try adding a few plants to your garden?
Unlike a fruit tree, you’ll have fruit within months. But a little pro tip: plant more than you think you might want! That way you’ll have a better chance of actually getting some into the kitchen—they’re an irresistible treat to snack on while you’re gardening.
Types of strawberries to grow
There are lots of different varieties to choose from. If you have room, it’s a good idea to grow a few different ones for a longer harvest.
There are three main types of strawberries: summer, perpetual /remontant, and alpine.
Summer strawberries do what they say on the packet – grow in summer! They’re the type you’re probably familiar with from the shops.
Perpetual/remontant strawberries are similar but fruit later through autumn, although they’re also more sensitive to how many hours of daylight there are.
Alpine strawberries are smaller and are happier than other varieties to grow somewhere a little shadier. This makes them a great understorey for other fruit trees! They’re also highly aromatic, which also makes them a good drying strawberry. If you want to know how to grow strawberries from seed, then alpine strawberries are a good type to try, as they don’t produce runners and only grow from seed.
Some common strawberry varieties available in Australia are Chandler, Tioga, Melba, Red Gauntlet, and Toolangi Choice. Plant a few different varieties to see which you prefer, and to have a longer strawberry season.
When to plant strawberries
When to plant strawberries is very dependent on your climate. If you’re like us, in cooler southern Australia, plant your strawberries in late winter or early spring.
But if you’re somewhere warm, like Queensland, you’ll be planting your strawberries in autumn for a late winter and early spring harvest. That way they’ll be done and dusted before the humid summer gets started.
As always, some local knowledge can go a long way, so ask around other gardeners in your region for their timing tips.
How to plant strawberries
Whenever you plant them, you’ll be pleased to know that how to grow strawberries isn’t complicated!
Just make sure you’ve loaded up their bed with plenty of nutrients to get them off to a flying start. The soil needs a good balance of nitrogen for leaves, and phosphorous and potash for good flowering and fruiting.
Dig through some good rotted-down manure if you can access it, and some high quality compost. We reckon making your own is always the best (and cheapest option), but if that’s not in your wheelhouse yet you can always add in some organic fertiliser pellets.
Dig everything through about a week or two before you plant your bed out.
Growing conditions for strawberries
Strawberries thrive in slightly acidic soil, with a pH of about 6-6.5. If your soil is outside this range you might need to add something to make it more or less acidic.
We’ve always followed the advice that pine needles are a great mulch to use for strawberries as it contributes to soil acidity, but not not everyone agrees that it actually shifts the soil pH!
Now we’re curious and we like to make sure everything we teach and recommend is based on sound science. Let us know if you’ve ever experimented with pine needles and soil pH, we always love learning more about growing fruit, even if it is myth-busting!
Strawberries like moist but well-drained soil. Growing them in raised beds, or even just raised or mounded rows within a garden can help with drainage.
If you’re wondering about how to grow strawberries in pots and thinking about those classic terracotta pots with many openings? They’re a nice idea but tend to overheat, dry out, and aren’t big enough for strawberries’ roots.
How we grow strawberries
We grow ours in the veggie garden. As a perennial crop, we dont’ shift them each year but just let the runners spread naturally.
At the start of each season we have a bit of a weed around them. Then we add some fresh compost, and tuck in a layer of fresh straw mulch under the plants to help keep the fruit off the ground.
In the spirit of biodiversity, our strawberries are good friends with the vegies (and yes, weeds) that grow nearby. The strawberry corner is actually a bit of riot of greens, herbs, and weeds.
They reward us with a delicious crop of fruit from October right through until April! They are definitely high value and low effort for big rewards.
Possibly the perfect garden fruit?
