I used to love visiting my grandpa’s garden when I was a kid. He always had strawberries and let me help pick them. Are strawberries hard to grow? SE

Strawberries are delicious and are not hard to grow if you follow a few simple guidelines. First of all is planting time.

The best time to plant is between Feb. 1 and March 15^th. I haven’t checked in the local garden centers, but strawberry plants are available from a variety of online suppliers. Once you get your plants, be sure to keep them moist so they’ll stay healthy.

When shopping for your plants, you’re going to notice a couple of different types of plants - June bearing and everbearing. June bearing strawberries produce their main crop between May and mid-June. Everbearing strawberries produce an initial crop like the June bearing varieties, however they can produce additional strawberries during the summer and then again in the fall. But, for the bigger harvests, June bearing wins out.

For best results, plant your strawberries in a location with full sun. The plants will grow in shady locations, but you’ll get a lot of greenery and very few strawberries.

Strawberry plants also like a soil pH of between 6 and 6.5. Most vegetable gardeners aim for a soil pH of around 7 so you are probably going to need to amend your soil to adjust the pH. You can guess at this, but the best bet is to get a soil test. Just gather up the sample from where you plan to plant strawberries and bring it to our office. You’ll get your results in about two weeks. We have instructions on our website in the Lawn and Garden Help/Soil section.

While strawberries are fairly easy to grow, they are pretty picky about planting depth. For best results, plant your strawberry plants deep enough so that their roots are just below the surface level of the soil and covered up. If they are planted too deep, they will rot and if they are too shallow, they will dry up and die, but no pressure…

Now, here’s one of the more challenging parts of growing strawberries, you shouldn’t expect fruit the first year. In reality you should work to prevent fruit during the first year by removing the flowers as they appear. When you do this, you are encouraging the plant to put its energy into a healthy root system rather than growing fruits. It kind of goes against what we want to do, but if you do this, you’ll likely have bigger harvests in coming years than you would have if you had just left them alone.

Next, you’ll want to renovate your strawberry beds shortly after the last harvest. You renovate the bed by using a weed eater or mower to remove the tops of the plants leaving about 1 inch of growth. This will help revitalize your plants in preparation for the next growing season.

Later in the year after we have had several hard freezes, you can apply 3 to 4 inches of mulch or straw. Leave the straw in place until March the following year. Once you see them starting to grow, remove most of the mulch but leave a little to provide a barrier between the soil and the plant. Good luck.

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org. Photo: OSU Ag. Communication Services