Potting Up Your Bareroot Strawberries (Video)

How to Plant Your Strawberries in Pots

When you order bareroot strawberries from us, you can either plant them straight outside in your strawberry beds and planters, or you can pot them up as shown in the video below.

You will need your strawberry plants, 9cm pots, compost and water.

TRANSCRIPT

At Ashridge Nurseries we’ve got bareroot strawberries for sale. We're just going to show you how they come and what to do with them when they arrive. So they'll come in plastic bags like that with a label on, so you know what variety it is. As soon as they arrive, pull them out, they should be nice and moist and that's the kind of size they'll be.

You've got a nice crown on there and a nice root system and they should be nice and white. So once they arrive, depending on what you want to do with them, they can be planted out straight in the garden, or if you’ve got a strawberry bed already prepared, plant them straight in the bed, give them a water and let them carry on doing what they’re doing until spring.

If you want to pot them up, a 9cm pot is probably the best size to plant them into, over winter until it's ready to plant in the spring if you haven't got the beds prepared or it's a bit too cold or whatever. So 9cm pot, add a bit of compost, it doesn't matter if the roots won't fit, just kind of give them a quick wriggle. Bit of compost in, give it a tap and a good drink of water.

They can sit outside or they can sit in a cold greenhouse, porch or conservatory. And then in the spring, the roots should have started rooting through the compost and then once you've prepared your strawberry bed or your pots or your planters or whatever you’re going to plant them into, they can be planted straight in. The foliage will grow up like that and by the spring, you’ll have a nice plant and they’ll start to flower.

Feed them miracle grow in the spring and that should start feeding them. You should have lots of lovely strawberries in the summer.

The Basics of Growing Strawberries 

Your strawberry plants are grown from shoots called runners that were produced by adult plants during the previous summer. These are encouraged to take root securely and allowed to grow before being lifted and sent to you.

• When your plants make runners of their own, you can select the best one or two of them and plant them next to your older plants to make new bushes.
• Strawberries fruit quite well in their first year, very well in their second year and about the same in their third year. After that, their crops decline and they often pick up diseases.
• For this reason, we recommend that you arrange your plants in rows with space on one or both sides and keep track of their age. Each year, take at least one runner from each plant and make a new row with them. Like this, you will be sure to always have a row of second year plants that will do you proud.
• After the 3rd year, it is best to remove and burn your old plants.