Strawberries Ideas, Tips & Guides

The fruits and vegetables harvested from your own patch of earth are always the sweetest–doubly so if your garden is more shoebox than sprawling country pile. In pursuit of the perfect strawberry, modern gardeners are turning to the old Victorian favourite: cloches.

Years ago, I was introduced to honeyberries (known to me as haskap berries) via a delicious jam from the province of Saskatchewan. Little did I know back then that growing honeberries is pretty easy. Though it’s not a fruit commonly known in North America, the shrubs thrive in most of the U.S. and Canada—even Alaska—and make a beautiful garden addition. Once established, the plants can produce for 30 years or more. With a flavor that can be described as a cross between a blueberry and a raspberry—with a bit of a zing—honeyberries are versatil

Scattered rain fell over the weekend. Peppers and okra are coming as the watermelon harvest finishes up. Disease and insect pressure remains high, and planning for strawberry planting is beginning. See details below.

happy_lark / Getty Images

Marty Baldwin

You’ve had a bumper crop of strawberries (or scored a great deal at the farmers market) and already spent the summer enjoying your bounty via fresh strawberry recipes. Now you have lots left—what are you supposed to do with all those extra strawberries? Fortunately, freezing strawberries is a great way to preserve your haul for longer than that brief summer window.

Claire Hoppe

Sur La Table

Bryce Jones

Even a toddler can look at a strawberry and call it one! But as the saying goes–all that glitters is not gold, and all berries that look like strawberries are not so! With this article, you’ll learn to discern the real ones from these mimics.

Summer is arriving and, all of a sudden, the kitchen garden is coming into its own. I am harvesting masses of salad leaves, broad beans and strawberries, and hopefully the first new potatoes. I can almost see things growing before my eyes, including the weeds, which I make an effort to keep on top of every few days (although I leave self-seeded dark pink poppies and some mauve linaria to encourage insects and add colour). To make the most of a small space, I grow salad leaves in large galvanised metal troughs, making sure that I sow a new crop every few weeks so I have a constant supply through the summer. Salad leaf mixes, including swift-growing, cut-and-come-again lettuce, rocket and mustard leaves, are available from almost any seed company, or at garden centres. Winter salad leaves, including mizuna, are best sown after midsummer, as they tend to run to seed quickly. I grow my salad leaves in the least time-consuming way, scattering the seeds thinly on the surface of the prepared soil or compost, and raking them in gently with a hand rake. Keep them watered and they will germinate within a few days and be ready to harvest in about six weeks. If you want to grow them in your vegetable beds, it is better to sow them in drills, so that the emerging seedlings are easily distinguishable from the weeds.

Most fruits have seeds lodged deep within their fleshy innards. But Mother Nature loves her exceptions! Read on to learn about those peculiar fruits that appear to have seeds on the outside.

Carson Downing

Kelsey Hansen

As the weather continues to warm up, strawberry harvest wraps up, tomatoes and peppers are coming on strong, and cucurbit harvest is beginning. Read more details below.

Wild strawberries or alpine strawberries, Fragaria vesca, are delicious, tiny red fruits borne on low-growing, spreading, perennial plants, from spring to autumn. Perfect for  informal spots around the garden, they grow in a variety of situations, including cracks in paving and stone walls. In some situations they can become invasive. Wild strawberries are native to many countries in the Northern Hemisphere and are highly sought after due to their intense flavour, which is said to be sweeter than that of cultivated strawberries. If fruit production is your main aim, look for named varieties of wild strawberry that have been bred to produce slightly larger fruits than those of the species, although neither produce anywhere near the size and quantity of fruit borne by cultivated strawberry plants.

Trader Joe's

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Bryce Jones

If you think bark is solely a holiday treat, think again. We’re talking edible bark—think peppermint bark, chocolate bark, and other variations of this crisp, chilled treat that so often make appearances in holiday cookie swaps and gift boxes. Many of us might associate bark (mainly peppermint bark) with cozy holiday memories, but bark is actually also the perfect warm-weather treat: As temperatures climb, a cool treat is sometimes exactly what you’re craving.

What makes these plants special in the world of gardening? Well, all of these bring something unique to the table (umm, the sides on the leaves or stems) that will enrich your plant collection!

Left: Gary Miller / Getty Images; Right: Jacob Fox

What is this maggot-looking insect on the bottom of this strawberry leaf?

Wondering what to harvest in April? There’s a fair few things to gather this month, from fresh veggies to forced fruits. Here are just a couple of examples to harvest now or very soon!

I was trying to avoid tulips for today’s IAVOM, as they could easily become a mainstay for many weeks; however, these creamy tulips were tucked out of the way where they mightn’t otherwise be seen and, like last week’s fiery contribution, they are also a bit of an enigma. They are growing in the cutting beds where they were planted around 10 years ago with the sole purpose of cutting them. Presumably, they flowered in the first year of planting but, although there has been foliage in some of the intervening years, I don’t think there have been any further blooms until now. My guess is that these are mature bulblets from the original bulbs, now large enough to flower: I have only picked the two blooms that were in full flower, but there are others to come. They may be ‘Exotic Emperor’, which I have bought periodically over the years.

What is the bloated tan thing found on the underside of this strawberry leaf?

What is the tiny critter on the petal of this strawberry bloom?

We have lots of meetings coming up over the next few months, so be sure to keep a close eye on the Upcoming Events tab so you don’t miss anything. Coming up this week, we have the Upstate Apple Meeting in Walhalla and the Midlands Strawberry Meeting in Saluda.

Growing strawberries is a great way to add fresh fruit to your home garden, and it couldn’t be easier.

Nicholas Sampogna

Stocks Strawberries are subject to several serious virus diseases, and at one time these threatened to make commercial cultivation quite uneconomic and garden culture most disappointing. However, there has been considerable improvement in the general health of strawberry stocks since the introduction of a government scheme of inspection.

You might know about Croton and Polka Dot indoor plants. But did you know that Begonia, Fittonia, Ctenanthe, Tradescantia, Stromanthe, Cordyline, and Neoregelia also have varieties with 4 color leaves?

Increasingly, news outlets are discovering something interesting: their audiences are tired of gloom and doom stories. Instead of only covering what’s not working, readers want the media to cover what is working: ideas, solutions and actions that are making positive change in the world.

Tips for Growing Strawberry Geraniums Outdoors

After reading this till the end, you’ll be able to identify the Poison Ivy Look Alike Plants growing around you. As these are not as harmful as poison ivy, you won’t need to get rid of them.

Common vetch (Vicia sativa) is starting to show up in vegetable fields. Vetch is a cool-season weed that begins germinating in the fall and begins blooming in the winter, peaking in the spring. Vetch is in the legume family, making it capable of fixing nitrogen in the soil. For this reason, vetches are sometimes used as a component of multi-species cover crops. Vetch can be particularly problematic in crops like strawberries as it comes up in the planting holes in the plastic, competing with the young strawberry transplants for water and nutrients. This competition can significantly slow down the development of the strawberries, reducing their yield in the spring.