I came across the idea of growing strawberries at home few month back in the summer while I was shopping the supermarket. Every time I looked at the beautiful and delicious strawberries, I couldn't stop myself of pick up few boxes of strawberries. After I went back home, I immediately consumed two boxes of strawberries and decided to leave the other few boxes for tomorrow. The day after, when I picked up the strawberries from my fridge, the strawberries are starting rotted. Then, the idea of growing my own strawberries came into my mind. I did some quick search on the Internet and found out strawberry is easy to grow and low maintain plants, but the best time to plant strawberry is early spring and late winter, I already missed that period.
Few months later, I still keep the 'dream' of growing my own strawberry, and the time is just perfect - February. I googled on 'strawberry plant Ireland', about 238,000 results showed up. The first result from English's Fruit Nursery offers a variety of fruit plant, but they don't offer online order, so clicked on second result Strawberry Plants Ireland. This website is dedicated to strawberry plants. They only offer four varieties of strawberry plants for sale with options of potted and bare root plants.
The variety I ordered through Strawberry Plants Ireland is Elsanta Bare Root Strawberry Plant. According to Strawberry Plants Ireland, Elsanta is:
The most popular variety in Northern Europe. Superb fruit quality and adaptability to many different growing systems make it our first choice. Bare root strawberry plants are only suitable for planting from January to early April.
This is just what I want - first choice! February is just perfect for bare root strawberry plants.
After ordered my 50 strawberry plants, I made a shopping list based on the advice from Quickcrop and The Garden Shop.
This is my shopping list(price quote is for one item):
- 50 x Elsanta Bare Root Strawberry Plant (€1)
- 12 x Strawberry Planter Trio Pot from Dealz (€1.49)
- 10 x pot from Dealz (€1.49)
- 3 x bag of organic compost(40L) from Aldi (€2.69)
- 1 x Chicken manure pallet(7kg) from Aldi (#7.99)
- 2 x Time-release fertilizer from Dealz (€1.49)
- 1 x Walk in greenhouse from Home Store (€24.99)
- 2 x Tomato liquid fertilizer from Dealz (€1.49)
That is €123.83 in total.
How I plant my strawberry plants?
I ordered my strawberry plants from Strawberry Plants Ireland on Wednesday and they send out on the following Monday. The delivery took two days, so I got my strawberry plants on Wednesday. This is just a week after I made my order.
- After taking plants out of the boxes, I sprayed some water on the roots.
- Mixed one bottle of Time-release fertilizer with 120L of compost
- Fill the pots with 2/3 full of compost
- Water the soil until the water starts to drain from the bottom of the pot
- Set a plant on top of each soil mound
- Fill up the pots with compost
- Water the soil again
The whole process took me about 2 hours as a novice.
It is own few days after the potting, so I can not tell how many strawberry plants are alive, but I will update after a month