Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Joe Hicks on September 20, 2021, 08:33
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Good autumn everyone. I want to grow some more more strawberries on my allotment, particularly some everbearers and some in my greenhouse for earlier cropping and protection (the late summer rain in Yorkshire rotted masses of my outdoor crop), but I'm lacking space. Therefore, I was thinking of growing them in pots. However, I've not done this before and can't find particularly clear advice on how big pots need to be for a good crop. I have access to lots of pots of various sizes including quite big (e.g. 10l).
I'm not interested in grow bags as I want to make my own soil-compost mix and keep plants in for the usual few years.
Any advice and ideally actual experience welcome. Thanks.
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maybe 3 plants per builders bucket good luck
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maybe 3 plants per builders bucket good luck
Thanks, although that sounds like a lot! One plant in the ground is easily bigger in diameter than a builder's bucket after the first year (when in growth). Have you had success with this?
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I grow all my strawberries in pots all over the plot. originated from some plants I bought from Lidl in 2016/2017
Since then have taken about twenty runner cuttings each year to keep topping up my crop up and adding to more pots. A couple of runners each year do not take.
My pots are rectangular and are 14 inch x 6 inch wide x 6 inch deep.
I have three plants in each and they produce very well from April to September.
Pick about a 1l pyrex bowl full of strawberries at least each week from the twenty pots I have and often just pick some to eat straight away as I walk by.
Do not feed them at all, just use Verve multi-purpose compost to start the pot off with the plants and that stays put each year, with no further top up.
Do water them with a spray hose every day, unless we get a rainy day.
Some pots are placed around the outside of my greenhouse. One of those in a photo below.
As you can see they are still producing nicely in September after I picked a load at the weekend;
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Thanks very much for the info lettice, that's interesting to hear. If you're still getting strawberries at this time of year do you know what variety they are? I'm keen to extend my season, which ended maybe mid-August this year.
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I bought the plants originally as I mentioned above in 2016 from Lidl.
I do not really shop there, but some on here said they were selling £1 strawberry plants.
So popped down and bought some.
Looking back at my gardening diaries, the varieties were roman, merlan and a tristan
I made notes that I grew on the Roman and Tristan with runners and have done ever since.
Also wrote down that it mentioned they were everbearing strawberries.
If I recall the merlan plant did not do well, so did not use it again. Expect it went in the compost bin.
In my notes for the year I had an X next to the merlan variety, which for me means no good.
Having seen strawberries from other growers, the runners seem shorter than some I have seen. But still they have produced well for me.
The roman has white flower petals and the Tristan red petals.
Have noticed that the ones that are three or more years old, (the now five year old originals and my first few years of runner produced plants) produce through the season. The new runner ones produce for two or there months, so assume they have become established with age.
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John (site owner) has some advice here for growing under cover.
https://www.allotment-garden.org/garden-diary/6403/strawberries-by-the-kilo/
I usually have some strawberries in containers under cover for early crops and I would agree with his advice. For the best results provide warmth, water and nutrients :)
If you want to keep plants long term, you will need a few decent sized pots, but I find if you pot up runners and overwinter them in the greenhouse, they grow for a longer season and then fruit well the following year. I usually empty the containers out and start afresh with new runners, but I have limited greenhouse space so don't want permanent pots of them in there. 3 new plants per builders bucket is what I do and they are pushing each other out of the way by the next summer.
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Thanks for the replies, very helpful and much appreciated.
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Another idea, consider growing strawberries on a tower. There are many different styles of "strawberry tower", from design-your-own to pre-manufactured.
Whatever you end up doing, good luck!