BROWSE HOW TOs

How to Plant Strawberries in a Backyard Garden

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

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Planting strawberries in a backyard garden is a simple process, but successfully growing them will depend on your soil preparation.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

Strawberry plant
Weed spray
Manure
Gardening shovel

Step1

Choose a kind of strawberry to plant. There are many varieties of strawberries within three main types: June Bearing, Day Neutral and Everbearing.

Step2

Pick a planting area in your backyard garden that has a lot of sun exposure. Preferably, the area should also have a slight slope to help with drainage. The planting area should not be a place where other crops have grown, such as eggplants, tomatoes, peppers or potatoes, because they are sources of root rot fungi that can kill strawberries.

Step3

Use a weed or grass spray on the planting area 2 weeks before you plant your strawberries. This should be done in the spring, when the soil is fairly dry. Add organic matter such as manure to enrich the planting area.

Step4

Prepare the soil for planting your strawberries. The planting area's soil should have a pH between 5.7 and 6.3. Add some limestone to your soil if the soil is too acidic. The limestone will increase the pH level of the soil.

Step5

Purchase strawberry plants from a reputable nursery to ensure your plants are certified as disease-free.

Step6

Dig a hole for the strawberry plant. The hole should be 1.5 times larger than the plant's roots.

Step7

Place the strawberry plant in the hole and fill in the hole with soil to secure the plant. If you are planting multiple strawberry plants, place them in a row, leaving about 18 inches between each plant. The rows should be 3 to 4 feet wide.

Step8

Water the strawberry plants once they are planted. Continue to water the plants on a weekly basis with approximately 1 to 2 inches of water for juicy strawberries.

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Comments

GreenGardenChic said

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on 1/22/2008 Strawberries a very cold hardy, down to zone 5. They go dormant during the winter and come right back with the first few warm days. Plant them as soon as you can find them bare root in nurseries, check out my article: www.ehow.com/how_2184212_save-money-bare-root-fruit.html

bmi57 said

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on 10/2/2007 Should they be covered with a plastic or something in the winter? We are not sure what to do with ours, this is the first time planting strawberries.