After all my years of gardening and teaching others how to grow things, I can tell you that strawberries are absolutely one of the most rewarding plants you can grow at home. There’s something magical about picking a sun-warmed strawberry straight from your own garden and eating it there and then. The taste is incomparable to those anaemic-looking shop-bought ones that have been flown halfway around the world.
I’ve helped countless beginners on my Garden Ninja forum get started with growing strawberries, and the brilliant news is they’re actually dead easy once you understand a few key principles. Whether you’ve got a massive garden, a small patio, or just a sunny windowsill, you can grow strawberries successfully.
This guide will show you exactly how to grow strawberries in UK conditions, whether you’re planting them in containers, grow bags, raised beds, or directly in the ground. I’ll share the mistakes I’ve made so you don’t have to repeat them, and the techniques that have worked brilliantly for my clients and me over the decades. By the end of this guide, you’ll know everything you need to produce basket loads of delicious strawberries from spring right through to autumn.
Before you rush out and buy the first strawberry plants you see, you need to understand the three main types available. This is where a lot of beginners come unstuck because they don’t realise there’s a fundamental difference in how these plants fruit.
| Strawberry Type | Fruiting Period | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Summer Fruiting | June to July | Jam making, freezing, large harvests |
| Perpetual (Everbearing) | June to October | Fresh eating, steady supply |
| Alpine | June to October | Shade tolerance, gourmet flavour |
These produce one massive crop over about two to three weeks, usually in June and July here in the UK. These are the workhorses of the strawberry world and typically produce larger, sweeter fruits in abundance. They give you that one glorious period where you’re absolutely inundated with strawberries.
If you want to make jam or freeze loads of strawberries for the year, summer fruiting varieties are your absolute weapon. Top varieties include Cambridge Favourite (disease resistant and reliable), Honeoye (early season and heavy cropping), Elsanta (commercial favourite with brilliant flavour), and Royal Sovereign (old heritage variety with unbeatable taste). They’re bombproof and reliable in British gardens and give you that satisfying glut all at once.
Then you’ve got perpetual strawberries (sometimes called everbearing), which fruit throughout the growing season from June right through to the first frosts in October. Rather than one big harvest, you get smaller flushes of fruit continuously, which is brilliant if you want a steady supply for eating fresh.
The fruits are often slightly smaller than summer varieties, but you get the benefit of picking strawberries for months rather than weeks.
Try Mara des Bois for incredible alpine-like flavour, Albion for large fruits with excellent disease resistance, or Flamenco for consistent production right through autumn.
For most beginners, I’d suggest starting with a summer fruiting variety simply because they’re more forgiving and give you that satisfying glut of fruit to show for your efforts. Once you’ve got the hang of it, add a few perpetual plants to extend your season.
Alpine strawberries are the tiny gourmet option, producing small, intensely flavoured fruits continuously from June to October. They’re more shade-tolerant than other types and have a distinctive wild strawberry taste that’s absolutely delicious.
Varieties like Mignonette and Alexandria are perfect for edging paths or growing in partial shade where other strawberries struggle. The fruits are fiddly to pick, being so small and tend to get squished easily with big hands, but the flavour more than makes up for it. They’re brilliant if you’ve only got a shady spot to work with.
This is the question I get asked most often, and the honest answer is that both methods work brilliantly, but each has distinct advantages.
Growing strawberries in containers gives you complete control and keeps the fruits up off the ground, away from slugs and soil-borne diseases.
I’ve had brilliant success with strawberries in everything from traditional terracotta pots to grow bags, hanging baskets, and even old colanders with drainage holes drilled in the bottom. The key advantage, which I always tell people on my forum responses about strawberry growing, is that you can move containers around to follow the sun and bring them under cover if late frosts threaten your flowers.
Growing strawberries in the ground or raised beds gives you plants with access to more nutrients and moisture, meaning less daily faff with watering.
The downside is that you need to manage runners more carefully to prevent them from taking over your entire bed, and fruits sitting on wet soil can rot or get munched by slugs before you pick them.
In my own garden, I use both methods. I’ve got a dedicated strawberry bed for my main summer crop, and several large containers dotted around the patio for perpetual varieties that I can keep an eye on easily.
Timing is everything with strawberries, and getting this right makes the difference between success and disappointment. The best time to plant strawberries in the UK is either late summer to early autumn (August to September) or early spring (March to April).
Autumn planting is actually my preferred method because it gives the plants time to establish their root systems over winter, meaning they’ll fruit properly in their first summer. When you plant in spring, the plants often won’t produce a significant crop until the following year as they’re too busy establishing themselves.
One critical point I always emphasise is never plant strawberries when the ground is waterlogged or frozen solid. They need to get their roots established, and planting into hostile conditions just stresses them unnecessarily.
Container growing is probably the easiest way to start with strawberries, so let’s break this down step by step.
Fill your containers with a high-quality, peat-free, multi-purpose compost, mixed with about 25% sharp sand or perlite to improve drainage. This free-draining mix is absolutely essential.
Then plant your strawberries so the crown (the bit where the leaves emerge) sits exactly at soil level, not buried and not sticking up. Bury it too deep, and it’ll rot; plant it too shallow, and the roots dry out.
Space plants about 20cm apart in larger containers, or use one plant per 20cm pot.
Position your containers in the sunniest spot you’ve got; strawberries need at least six to eight hours of direct sunlight to fruit well. They’ll tolerate partial shade but expect fewer and smaller fruits.
The biggest challenge with container strawberries is watering. It’s a balancing act, but you’ll get the feel for it quickly; consistency rather than perfection is what matters.
As one of my forum members discovered when they posted about their container strawberries, the secret is regular attention rather than getting everything perfect.
If you’re planting directly in the ground, site preparation makes all the difference. Strawberries like fertile, well-draining, slightly acidic soil with a pH around 5.5 to 6.5.
They’ll tolerate most soil types but struggle in heavy waterlogged clay or very chalky soils.
If your soil is heavy clay like mine was in parts of my old Manchester garden, either grow them in raised beds or dig in masses of organic matter and sharp grit to improve drainage. I cannot stress enough how much strawberries hate wet feet.
Prepare the bed a few weeks before planting by digging in well-rotted compost or farmyard manure at about a bucketful per square metre. Strawberries are hungry plants, and giving them a good start pays dividends.
When planting, dig a hole slightly wider than the root ball, spread the roots out gently, and firm the soil back around them with the crown sitting exactly at soil level. Water them in thoroughly and apply a 5cm layer of straw or biodegradable mulch matting around the plants.
Strawberries are greedy feeders, especially when they’re pumping out flowers and fruits. The feeding regime is slightly different depending on whether you’re growing in containers or the ground, but the principles are the same.
Container-grown strawberries need more intensive feeding because they can’t access nutrients from the surrounding soil.
Start feeding them with a tomato or strawberry-specific liquid feed once the first flowers appear, and continue every week to ten days until fruiting finishes. These feeds are potassium-rich for fruits.
The golden rule is never to overfeed with nitrogen-rich feeds, as this produces loads of leafy growth at the expense of flowers and fruits. Stick with high potassium feeds, and your strawberries will reward you with masses of fruit.
This is where beginners often get confused, and I’ve answered this question countless times on my forum. Strawberry plants send out long stems called runners that produce baby plantlets at intervals along their length.
These runners are the plant’s way of propagating itself, and left unchecked, they’ll turn your strawberry bed into an impenetrable jungle within a year or two.
Move propagated plants to a fresh location, as strawberries shouldn’t be grown in the same soil year after year due to disease buildup. This crop rotation principle is important for healthy strawberries that produce well year after year.
I’m going to be brutally honest with you, Ninjas. If you don’t protect your strawberries, you’ll be feeding the local wildlife rather than yourself. Birds absolutely adore ripe strawberries and will strip your plants clean given half a chance.
Slugs and snails are the other major pests, and they’re far worse on ground-grown strawberries than container-grown ones. I’m a big advocate of organic pest control, so I encourage natural predators into your garden rather than using chemical slug pellets that harm beneficial wildlife.
Aphids can occasionally cluster on new growth and strawberry leaves can develop powdery mildew if air circulation is poor. Both problems are usually minor and can be managed by good garden hygiene and spacing plants properly. Remove any diseased leaves as soon as you spot them and don’t compost them.
Vine weevil larvae are particularly fond of strawberry roots in containers; the adults notch the leaf edges, and the grubs eat the roots. If you spot the telltale leaf damage, use a biological control nematode drench to kill the larvae.
This is the moment you’ve been waiting for, Ninjas. Strawberries are ready to pick when they’re fully coloured red all over with no white or green areas remaining. Pick them in the morning once the dew has dried, but before the midday heat; this is when they’re at their sweetest and most flavourful.
The image below shows a ripe and a few unripe strawberries. It’s ok to remove only the ripe red ones and leave the others; they will still ripen later!
A well-grown strawberry plant can produce anywhere from six to twenty good-sized fruits, depending on variety and growing conditions. Summer fruiting varieties give you that glut all at once, perfect for making jam, freezing, or having strawberry everything for a fortnight.
The image below shows a bunch of unripe strawberries. These will be tart and unusable, so always wait until they are bright red!
After three to four years, strawberry plants start to lose vigour and produce smaller crops. This is when you replace them with young plants you’ve propagated from runners or buy in fresh stock. Plant them in a different location to avoid soil disease problems. This crop rotation principle is essential for healthy strawberries, and you should really read my guide on crop rotation here.
You can, but it’s far slower and more fiddly than buying plants or propagating from runners. Strawberry seeds take weeks to germinate, the seedlings are tiny and delicate, and they won’t fruit in their first year. Most shop-bought strawberries are F1 hybrids, which won’t come true from seed anyway.
For beginners, buying certified disease-free plants or propagating from runners is definitely the way forward.
Yes, strawberries are perennial plants that will return year after year. They’re perfectly hardy in UK winters and don’t need any special protection. However, their productivity declines after three to four years so you’ll need to replace them with fresh plants to maintain good crops. They’re not truly permanent like apple trees; think of them as medium-term perennials.
This depends on how many strawberries you want to eat! As a rough guide, three to five plants will give a family of four enough for fresh eating throughout the season. If you want enough for jam making or freezing, plant ten to twenty summer fruiting plants. Remember you can always start small and expand once you see how much you actually harvest and use.
Strawberries will tolerate partial shade, but fruiting will be significantly reduced. They really do need at least six hours of direct sunlight daily for good crops. In heavy shade, they’ll produce lots of leaves but very few flowers or fruits. If shade is your only option, try alpine strawberrie,s which are more tolerant, though the fruits are much smaller.
Yellow leaves on strawberries usually indicate either a watering problem or a nutrient deficiency. Too much or too little water both cause yellowing, so check your watering regime first. It could also be a lack of nitrogen if you haven’t fed them, or natural ageing of older leaves which is fine. Remove yellow leaves and adjust your care accordingly.
If you’ve planted in autumn, let them flower and fruit the following summer as normal. If you’ve planted in spring, some gardeners recommend removing flowers the first year to help plants establish stronger root systems. Personally, I let spring-planted strawberries fruit lightly in their first year because beginners need to see results to stay motivated! The main crop will come in year two regardless. Also, the flowers are gorgeous, see below, so don’t waste their beauty!
As long as your plants were healthy with no diseases, yes you can reuse the compost. However, strawberries are hungry feeders and will have depleted nutrients, so refresh it by mixing with new compost and adding a slow release fertiliser. I’ve got a comprehensive guide to reusing old compost that covers this in detail.
Cambridge Favourite is absolutely bombproof for beginners. It’s disease-resistant, produces heavy, delicious crops reliably, and tolerates a wide range of soil conditions. Honeoye is another brilliant choice for early-season fruits. For perpetual varieties, try Mara des Bois, which has fantastic flavour. You honestly can’t go far wrong with any of these.
Growing strawberries successfully is one of those gardening skills that builds your confidence and gets you hooked on growing your own. Once you’ve mastered the basics covered in this guide, you’ll find yourself expanding your strawberry patch, trying new varieties, and probably boring your friends with tales of your harvest! If you’re feeling inspired to grow more of your own produce, check out my guide to growing tomatoes from seed, they pair perfectly with strawberries for summer abundance.
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Join the conversation on my Garden Ninja forum, where I’ve answered dozens of strawberry questions from beginners.
Check out these popular threads:
The forum is a brilliant place to ask your own questions and get advice from me and our community of experienced Ninjas!
Strawberries are a fantastic beginner fruit to grow, no matter what size garden you have. Once you start, you’ll probably never stop growing them! I know I haven’t!
Remember, if you get stuck or have questions about growing strawberries, you can always join my Garden Ninja forum where a brilliant community of experienced gardeners are on hand to help. We’ve got beginners through to experts sharing tips, troubleshooting problems, and celebrating successes. Gardening is so much more enjoyable when you’re part of a supportive community of fellow Ninjas!
Now get out there and start growing some strawberries. Your future self, eating sun-warmed berries straight from the plant, will thank you.
Happy gardening, Ninjas!
Lee Burkhill, known as the Garden Ninja, is an award-winning garden designer and horticulturist with over 30 years of gardening experience and 15 years as a professional garden designer. A qualified RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) professional, Lee specialises in sustainable garden design and practical horticultural advice. He designs and presents on BBC1’s Garden Rescue and in leading gardening publications. Lee combines three decades of hands-on gardening knowledge with professional design qualifications to help gardeners create beautiful, functional outdoor spaces.
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