Nothing is better than tucking into fresh strawberries from the vine with lashings of clotted cream. While growing your own strawberries might sound tricky, these delicious fruits are actually surprisingly easy to grow. Strawberry plants can be grown in the ground and containers, meaning even those with courtyard gardens or balconies can grow them.
However, getting strawberry plants to produce fruit isn’t always easy. Inconsistent watering, insufficient sunlight, and other factors, such as pests, diseases, and fertilising, can stop strawberry plants from producing fruit. Gardeners can ensure their strawberry plants produce fruit by choosing a variety that produces strawberries throughout the summer.
Bex Edwards, a gardening enthusiast with more than 27,000 followers on TikTok, has shared the best strawberry variety to grow for fruit “all summer long”.
Bex said strawberries are one of her favourite crops, and she grows them in her garden yearly. The variety she grows is called the “ever-bearer” variety.
Some strawberry varieties are early-cropping while others are late-cropping, but the “ever-bearer” variety will “keep giving you strawberries all summer long”.
The variety arrives in the form of runners. Each runner can be planted in containers or in the ground, with the crown of the runner poking out of the top of the soil surface.
The plants must be kept well-watered, fed, and positioned in a sunny spot.
“This year, you’ll be picking super delicious, sweet strawberries. You’ll be picking them for a few years,” Bex said.
“Once you’ve got a strawberry plant, you never have to buy more because they produce runners that you can pot up, and you can grow from those as well.”
Unlike other crops, strawberry plants are also winter hardy, which means they can survive through winter. However, they will need some protection from frost and water-logging.
