How to Grow Strawberry

Fragaria × ananassa · Also called: Garden strawberry, Fraise, Fresa, Frutilla, Morango, Erdbeere, Al-freiz, Strawberry plant

A strawberry field of long raised ridges covered in black plastic sheeting, with young green plants set through holes in two rows along each ridge, trees and hills in the distance.

Photo: Hayan Alhasan, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Strawberry is one of the highest-value crops a smallholder can grow on a small piece of land, and one of the most demanding. A tenth of a hectare can be worth more than a hectare of grain, and it can also be lost in three wet days. China grows by far the most, followed by the United States, Egypt, Mexico, Turkey, Spain, Morocco, Poland and Brazil, and it is spreading fast into hill areas of Asia and Africa where the nights are cool. It is a crop of plastic mulch, drip lines, clean planting material and picking every second day, and it rewards care more directly than almost anything else in this library.

Growing Strawberry, Stage by Stage

1. Get the land ready — Build raised beds on well-drained ground and cover them with black plastic before you plant anything.
2. Choose your planting material — Buy certified runners of a kind that suits your day length, and never dig plants out of an old bed.
3. Plant the runners — Plant with the crown exactly at soil level, which is the single most common thing done wrong.
4. Water — Water little and often at the roots through a drip line, and never over the leaves and fruit.
5. Weeds, runners and feeding — Keep the plastic sealed, cut off runners while the plant is fruiting, and feed little and often.
6. Flowering and fruit set — Small white rose-like flowers come first, and each one needs its whole centre pollinated to make a whole fruit.
7. Watch for trouble — Grey mould on the fruit and spider mites under the leaves are the two that decide most crops.
8. Harvest — Pick fully coloured fruit with its green cap and a short stalk, in the cool of the morning, every second day.
9. Keep, store and sell — Cool the fruit within the hour, never wash it before storing, and sell within a day or two.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: Fruit going soft and brown and then growing a grey dusty fur over it, spreading from one fruit to the ones touching it.

It likely means: Grey mould, the disease that costs more strawberry crops than anything else. It comes in through the flower and shows on the fruit, and it needs wet.

Do this: Pick off and carry away every affected fruit at every picking, and never drop one on the bed.

If you see: Newly planted runners that sit and do nothing, then rot at the base, or dry up and die although the bed was watered.

It likely means: The crown was planted at the wrong height. Buried too deep it rots; set too high it dries out. This is the commonest planting mistake in the crop.

Do this: Set the crown exactly level with the soil surface, neither buried nor standing proud.

If you see: Fruit that comes out lopsided, knobbly or with a hard flattened side, on plants that otherwise look healthy.

It likely means: Incomplete pollination. Every speck on the outside has to be pollinated for the flesh under it to swell, so a partly pollinated flower gives a partly swollen fruit.

Do this: Keep bees and other insects welcome, and never spray anything onto open flowers.

If you see: Leaves going pale and speckled, then bronzed and dry, with fine webbing and tiny moving specks on the undersides.

It likely means: Two-spotted spider mites. They build up fastest in hot, dusty, dry conditions and on plants that are short of water.

Do this: Check leaf undersides every time you pick, since by the time the top of the leaf looks wrong it is a heavy attack.

If you see: Plants collapsing one side at a time, outer leaves wilting and drying while the middle still looks alive, in patches across the bed.

It likely means: A soil-borne wilt, usually where the ground grew tomato, potato, chilli, eggplant or strawberry not long ago. The fungus lives in the soil for years.

Do this: Do not plant strawberries after any of those crops for three or four years.

If you see: A bed in its second or third season making plenty of leaf and runners but small, few and increasingly misshapen fruit.

It likely means: The bed is finished. Yield and fruit size fall away after one or two fruiting seasons, and virus quietly builds up in old plants.

Do this: Plan to replant with fresh certified runners after one or two fruiting seasons.

If you see: Fruit that was firm and bright when picked arriving at the market soft, leaking and beginning to mould.

It likely means: Heat, depth or wet. Field heat left in the fruit, boxes packed too deep, or fruit picked or washed wet.

Do this: Pick in the cool of the early morning and get the boxes into shade immediately.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your fruit is worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

Certified runners only. Never plants from an old bed.
Raised bed, black plastic, drip line underneath.
Crown exactly at soil level. Too deep rots, too high dries.
Water at the roots. Never over the leaves and fruit.
Cut runners off while the plant is fruiting.
Every fruit must rest on plastic or mulch, never on soil.
Walk the bed at every picking. Carry mouldy fruit away.
Look under the leaves for webbing. Mites hide there.
Pick dry, cool, every second day, with the green cap on.
Cool within an hour, never wash, sell within two days.

Test Yourself: Identification

Why is the whole field covered in black plastic?

When is a strawberry ready to pick?

What are the long stems running out sideways from the plant?

Honest Limits of This Guide

Timings are given in days and in the cool season rather than in named months, because strawberry is grown in winter in the subtropics, in summer in cool countries, and all year in the hills. Count from your own planting date.
Which kind suits you depends on day length and on your night temperatures, and the right answer changes over a short distance in hill country. This guide explains the difference between short-day and day-neutral kinds but cannot name the kind for your village, and a licensed dealer or your extension office can.
Yields here count fruit that left the field. Losses after picking are large in this crop and are not included in any published figure, so the money from a crop is always less than the tonnage suggests.
This guide names no chemical treatments. Fruit is picked every second day, so anything applied is on fruit that will be eaten within days, and the defences that actually work here are certified planting material, raised beds, mulch, drip irrigation and picking mouldy fruit out of the field.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Fragaria × ananassa (Weston) Rozier — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Fragaria × ananassa (EPPO code FRAAN) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
FAOSTAT crops and livestock products — production data for strawberries — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
Fragaria × ananassa (strawberry) — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)

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