Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Some varieties of strawberries produce so many runners that a smallholder never has to worry about multiplying strawberry plants. The plants themselves do all the work. This is typical for the June bearing varieties. Unfortunately, June bearing strawberries give you one crop and then go on to put all their energy into runners.

You can choose an assortment of June bearing strawberry varieties so your harvest season lasts longer, but there is a downside. No two varieties of strawberry quite tastes the same or preserves the same. Once your favorite variety finished producing on your smallholding each year, you won’t have fresh strawberries with that same flavour again for another year.

Day neutral and everbearing strawberries are different. If you find an everbearing strawberry variety that you really like, you can expect it put on two crops each year. Some energy will go into runner production, but more of the plant’s energy will go into fruit production.

Day neutral strawberries put almost all their energy into fruit production. Every three weeks from the onset of warm weather, you can expect a flavourful crop to develop every three to four weeks, especially if you keep the fruit picked, the garden well nourished with compost and watered just enough to keep the soil moist but not enough to keep the plants waterlogged (about 1-inch of water per week).

If you want to have a predictable supply of strawberries available all the way into the autumn, you’ll want to multiply your own day-neutral varieties. This can be far less expensive than ordering the typical minimum wholesale order of a 1000 plants, if you don’t have enough room to plant four 15-metre rows of strawberries (at least 4 x 15 metres overall). It is also very risky to order a 1000 plants of a strawberry you have never grown before (one recommendation I tried had less flavour than the grocery store strawberries shipping in from South American—an expensive lesson).

Day neutral strawberries produce very few runners unless you take action to encourage runner production. That action is very simple. First, you use a fertilizer that is high in nitrogen. Organic sources include alfalfa meal and composted chicken manure. This encourages plant growth and discourages flowering. Then you don’t allow the strawberry plants to produce fruit. Every time the strawberry flowers, you clip the flowers off between your fingernails. (This is good practice the first year after you plant anyway.) Allow any runners that develop to root down.

If you want to confirm that you will like the strawberry variety you’ve selected, allow the most robust plant to set fruit in the middle of the summer, remembering that higher nitrogen levels do “dilute” the flavor of the strawberry. This way you can decide if continuing your efforts is worthwhile for the next year.

During the second year, go ahead and allow the strawberry plants to set one initial crop of fruit. Then clip of the flowers for the balance of the growing season. This will encourage all the plant’s energy to go into runner production.

It is very easy to turn a patch of day neutral strawberries into a strong income generator for a smallholding U-pick operation. We generated over £500 each summer just from strawberry sales off our four 15 meter rows of day neutral strawberries. Then we were able to produce value added products that generated additional income from the less marketable strawberries—fresh strawberry tarts, jams and dried strawberries.

So find a space on your smallholding that you are willing to keep weed-free and dedicated to strawberry plant production. It will pay for itself.

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Article by Denise Rutledge for Rural Smallholdings Magazine