The great thing about strawberries is that they can grow easily in all gardens. Whether you’ve got a balcony, small courtyard or a larger garden, strawberries are well-suited to hanging baskets, garden pots, beds and even vertical planters with plants cascading down the side.  

In fact, as long as they’re in a decent sunny, well-draining position they’re bound to do well. Once you’ve found your spot, first prepare your soil by digging in some general fertiliser and compost. Then, I recommend spreading Tui strawberry food for additional potassium – to help stimulate large and healthy fruit.

You can grab your strawberry plants from Awapuni Nurseries and have them delivered direct to your door. We stock two popular varieties - camarosa and ventana. Both are classic home-grown varieties, producing medium to larger strawberries. Ventana are more conical shaped and produce more fruit earlier on in the season. But overall, both yield similar amounts – so I suggest growing a mix of both varieties.

Each regular sized bundle has four plants, which between them should produce 60 -100 strawberries come summer. So, provided you’ve got the room, I guide people towards four to six plants per person in a household. Obviously though, this is highly dependent on allowing for all the ‘samples’ that never make it off the patch.

When it comes to planting, try to place your plants around the edge of the planters and pots, so they can drape over the side. This prevents them from touching the ground and rotting. Dig holes 10cm deep and place the seedling inside. The hole may seem deeper than what you’re used to for seedlings, but strawberry roots need plenty of room. Pack the soil down firmly and surround with pea straw to help keep away the weeds.

If you’re planting in a larger garden bed, mound up rows of soil to encourage circulation and drainage. Next, I recommend covering the mounds with polythene and using soil to hold it down. Using polythene helps deter soil-borne diseases, and keeps the weeds away. Then, you simply cut holes in, and use a ruler to poke the plants through. If your mounds are 30cm wide, you’ll be able to fit around ten plants in 1m, over a zig-zag formation. If you look after your polythene, you'll be able to reuse it for several years.

However you plant your strawberries, the birds will also find them tasty, so remember to assemble netting over the plants to keep them all to yourself. In spring, they’ll benefit from another feed of fertiliser or Tui strawberry food.

Come Christmas, you ought to be ‘berry’ set up for masses of juicy strawberries to indulge in.  And remember, strawberry plants last up to five years, always producing more in their second year.