Gardening Tips: Tips for Growing Strawberries

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If you love strawberries and you have a big garden or backyard, this tip for growing strawberries is for you!

This tip for growing strawberries include selecting a strawberry plant that is vigorous and healthy. You want to select a virus free plant.

Three types of strawberries that are available to the home gardener:

* June Bearing strawberries produce a large, concentrated crop in late spring. You'll get more berries per season from June bearing strawberries, and the entire crop will ripen over a three week period.

* Ever Bearing strawberries produce one crop in spring and another in fall.

* Day Neutral plants are capable of producing fruit throughout most of the growing season.

Tip #1 (Site Selection and Preparation for planting strawberries)

Strawberries are plants that love sunlight. The more sun your strawberry plant gets the more fruit and quality berries it produces. Strawberries need at least six hours of sun a day to flower and set fruit.

Strawberries will not tolerate standing water, so try to select a site that is well drained.

Plant strawberry plants about 12 inches apart. Strawberries grow quickly into a bush about a foot around.

A pH of 5.3 to 6.5 is optimal, but strawberries will grow in soils with a pH between 5.0 and 7.0. Test kits are available in most garden supply stores, but if you plan to do a lot of gardening, a professional soil test is highly recommended. Soil tests are available through most county agricultural extension agents.

The site selected should be free from weeds, grubs and soil-borne diseases.

Tip #2 (Protecting your strawberries)

When the strawberries are showing a blush of pink, you have to find a way to scare birds from eating the berries. One way of doing this is put a net over the berries by tying the net to posts about one foot off the ground.

Don't spray the flowers with insecticides. You risk killing the bees which pollinate the flowers turning them from flowers into berries. Use a strong spray from your garden hose to knock any bugs off the plants.

Tip #2 (When to pick your strawberries)

When the color of your strawberries are a bright crimson red, they are now ready to be picked. Berries don't ripen any more after being picked so wait until they are ready to be eaten.

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