Propagating Strawberries in My GreenStalk!
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00:00 with an ever-bearing type strawberry called seascape earlier this year. It was like late
00:04 spring early summer. So I wanted to give you an update on how they're doing and then just share
00:09 some information on growing strawberries in containers, some things that I've learned
00:12 throughout the years. And then we are going to fill up another green stock vertical garden
00:17 with the babies from these strawberries right here. So these strawberries are clearly loving
00:22 their situation. They look amazing. They have produced so many strawberries this year. I mean
00:27 even with all the runners they've produced, which is a lot, I mean look at this. This is nuts. They've
00:33 still produced a ton of berries. They have started to bloom again. They kind of go in and out. We've
00:39 got a few little berries here but the kids love this situation right here because it's all at
00:45 their height. It's easy for them to harvest them and it's so nice to have them off the ground
00:49 honestly. You know we have a big row of strawberries out in the cut flower garden and they're amazingly
00:54 productive. They do really well out there but you have to get on your hands and knees to do anything
00:58 with them. And you know strawberries don't have a really long lifespan. So I was thinking when those
01:04 are starting to peter out out there I think I want to either revert all to you know growing something,
01:08 a growing situation like this, or I want to create a raised bed that's like waist high so that we
01:14 don't have to do any harvesting down on our hands and knees. So like I said strawberries life cycle
01:19 they have two or three good years in them before they start to peter out. I think commercial
01:23 growers will most of the time tell you the first year when you plant them to take off any runners
01:28 or blooms and let that plant establish kind of like fruit trees. I don't do that typically I just
01:32 kind of let them do their thing except for now I'm going to be cleaning the runners off at this point.
01:37 And then after that year after they've established they have two to three really productive years
01:42 and then they start to peter after that and you kind of have to replenish your crop. The good
01:46 thing about it is that your strawberries will send out runners which is one of the ways that
01:50 they reproduce themselves. Look at this it's just crazy. So if you're growing them in a row sort of
01:56 situation outside you can selectively leave some of these runners let them root in because they
02:02 will start to form roots. They will start to form roots at a node like that if they hit moist soil
02:09 and then when that mother plant starts to wane this one will have already started to root and
02:14 started to produce. The thing is though you don't want to let all of the plants set otherwise they
02:20 will choke themselves out and you'll get smaller berries. It's kind of like everything else you need
02:24 to make sure every plant gets proper light and airflow and that they're not trying to fight with
02:30 each other for nutrients. There's a lot of information online I think it's like I can't
02:34 remember it's like a mat growing system is what they call it but you have the mother plant you
02:38 let two or three babies you know root in around it and then they kind of form this network of
02:43 runners and kind of create a mat sort of a situation in their row and then every year you
02:49 have to be diligent about getting in there. I mean clearly you need to be diligent about getting in
02:52 there and taking some of the runners out so that not all of them not all of them root and kind of
02:58 take over the land because they will. Now this one did I already mention it was out by the cut flower
03:02 garden we moved it in here and we moved it in here because it was the only thing that we didn't have
03:08 set up on a drip irrigation out there so we were having to run out and water it which is easy.
03:13 You just put the hose in here fill it up to the line and then the water goes through here and
03:17 then there is a watering tray which I'll show you we're going to put one together again today
03:22 but there's a watering tray on the top of each one of the soil reservoirs that has little holes
03:27 that individually feed each pocket all the way down so every day you go it takes like a minute
03:33 you fill it to here and that's it. Since it was the only thing that we had to run out there and
03:36 water every day we decided to bring it in here because one I did want to get a second one set up
03:40 and get some babies going but it's also in an area where I'm already hand watering every day so it
03:45 makes it a lot easier. Also this one right here like you just saw you can get this little spinny
03:49 thing what do you call it lazy susan sort of thing so that if you are in a situation where you don't
03:55 have light all the way around like let's say that this is on a balcony or a porch or something and
04:00 this is the the wall of your house and the sun usually comes in from this direction well that
04:04 means the back side will normally get shade but if you've got it on a rotating base then you can go
04:09 and rotate it like a quarter of a turn every day or every other day or whatever so that you make
04:14 sure that this planter all the way around will get equal amounts of light. Out here in the greenhouse
04:20 it's pretty open and we'll have lots of light so I think they'll be happy. In fact let me show you
04:24 another vertical garden that we have set up it's just nuts I haven't cleaned it out yet I need to
04:29 so that I can start some more stuff. So this is the one we set up alongside the one with the
04:34 strawberries we did it both on the same day but this one's actually hooked up to an automatic
04:37 watering system you can get all the parts for that it's like this sort of a system you can see it
04:43 running up the back side and at the very top right here it's got this kind of just extender of the
04:48 hose that fills up the water reservoir for you so we've got a hose hooked to our faucet over here
04:53 that feeds under you can see it there and then goes to this it's on a timer so this one actually
04:58 waters by itself every day and you can see why I didn't clean it out we had a squash a random squash
05:04 sprout up in the greenhouse and we thought well let's see what it's going to do well it's kind of
05:09 taken over everything including this green stock garden it has rooted into some of the pockets
05:15 and we thought we would just let it go do its thing until we harvest and then I can get in
05:19 here and do some cleanup we've got a patio sunshine tomato there are some other strawberries in here
05:25 there's a sage and a thyme plant and then there's also some spring crops there's some lettuce and
05:31 broccoli and stuff I just haven't had a chance to clean out yet but that is something on the docket
05:36 oh and look see there's one from that green stock so the first thing to consider about growing
05:42 strawberries in containers is the container itself what kind of container do you need
05:46 uh well there are the traditional type of strawberry containers which are usually a little
05:49 smaller than this uh but they're terracotta or glazed ceramic and they have little pockets much
05:54 like this but they are a lot heavier and usually a lot shorter just because of the the heaviness
05:59 of them I haven't ever seen one that's super big like maybe knee height and maybe like nine or ten
06:05 holes this vertical garden right here has 30 holes which is really nice you can grow 30 strawberry
06:10 plants at a time and that's a lot that's that's a lot you can get a lot of production out of that
06:15 in a very small amount of square footage but berry plants don't need a super deep container
06:20 they're fairly shallow rooted plants so depth isn't something that you have to consider as much
06:24 as surface area you really don't want to put them too close together you know putting them about
06:30 this far apart they're about a foot apart is perfect usually they say about four per square feet
06:35 is max I think if I was to hold a ruler up we'd have about a foot maybe 10 to 12 inches here
06:41 between the crowns of each one of these plants and you can see right here exactly how big these are
06:47 so these plants you know they're dotted around the edges which is nice too when you're planting
06:52 strawberries it's nice to have the fruit dangling over the edge rather than you know you'll have
06:56 some toward the back of the plant but it's not as hard to harvest when you've got fruit ready to go
07:01 on the edges the second thing to think about is the type or variety of strawberry that you're
07:06 growing now if you're growing them in containers I'm guessing you're going to want strawberries
07:09 throughout the whole season I would stay away from June bearing varieties they only bear for a very
07:14 short window and then they're done for the rest of the season and then you just have I mean they
07:17 create a really pretty look but they're not producing anything so ever bearing they're not
07:22 so sensitive to temperature fluctuations they're just a little bit more of a not a non-temperature
07:28 June bearing aren't temperamental but they're just an easier going variety and you get fruit
07:32 throughout the season so the seascape variety that we have here they are ever bearing the next thing
07:37 is consistency of water so this one right here all of these in this vertical garden we watered once a
07:42 day throughout the summer even when it was really hot there was a couple of days where we missed it
07:46 and they were okay they're a tiny bit wilted but not bad we got them watered and they bounced
07:51 right back but we never had to water them more than once a day when it was super super hot and
07:56 these were you know when they were out by the flower shed they were subjected to everything
08:00 full sun all day long wind full wind they weren't protected by anything so they did really well now
08:07 our strawberries that are planted in the ground we water those every other day they get drip
08:10 irrigation and they seem to do really well with that something to consider is they do like a
08:16 slightly lower ph a slightly acidic soil they just tend to be more productive that way so ours can
08:23 deal with chlorosis issues because our ph is pretty high and it binds up iron in the soil so you may
08:28 notice some yellowing of leaves but they still have that dark green veining we have to give ours
08:32 chelated iron every once in a while soil acidifier every once in a while but in containers it seems
08:37 like they hold a little bit better with that and that brings me to fertilizing which i'm going to
08:42 do today berry tone is what we use now i did fertilize these when i planted and they usually
08:47 recommend like twice a year i think oh established plants when to feed feed twice per year early
08:54 spring and late spring we're going to go ahead and fertilize again today because we're going to try
08:57 to extend our season a little bit here in the greenhouse so i'm going to uh fertilize these
09:02 right here and the runners that we try to root i'm not going to put any fertilizer in the soil
09:06 for those yet and the very last thing i wanted to mention before we get into our planting project
09:11 just because i don't want to forget anything is overwintering something like this so strawberries
09:16 typically need a dormant period uh just like a lot of plants you know that we keep outside
09:20 strawberries outside our perennial here we're a zone six i will not be wintering these over i don't
09:25 think here in the greenhouse because we heat the greenhouse it's usually like 50 to 55 to 60-ish
09:31 degrees in here at any given time during the winter so if you live in a more mild climate
09:37 you could just reposition your container near a house near your house like the south side of the
09:42 house where it can catch a little bit of heat a little bit of sun if you live in a colder climate
09:46 you'll probably need to move it into a structure of some kind a shed they don't need light because
09:51 you know the whole top of the plant dies back you can put it in a garage i might pop these in the
09:56 high tunnel we're not going to heat the high tunnel it will just be like a protective covering
10:00 over them you can also wrap them in blankets or some people do bubble wrap things like that just
10:05 to keep a little bit of insulation and if your container is small enough you can bury the whole
10:09 thing you could dump a bunch of straw over the top of it that's another way to kind of hill them in
10:14 and keep them safe during the winter i think that is the last thing i wanted to mention before we
10:18 start in on our project so let's talk about runners and how to get them to root how to get baby plants
10:24 from your already established plants so when your plant sends out a runner like this let me see if
10:28 i can get the whole thing out it's like a whole big network jumble of runners here check that out
10:34 this is one runner off the plant there are four little baby plants on this thing typically the
10:39 one closest to the plant is going to be the strongest but what happens is that these plants
10:45 are taking away energy from the mother plant so if you are wanting your plant to be very productive
10:51 you'll want to clip most if not all of these off because then all of the energy used to keep these
10:56 alive will be put into this plant to be more productive with its fruit but like i said if
11:01 you're growing these outside and you want to perpetuate your crop if you let your plant set
11:04 a few of these and root in that's not going to really hurt your plant at all it's when you let
11:09 all of these runners root which you know i probably should have been on it a little bit more
11:14 the thing is though you can cut these off and pop these little plants down in soil but they have a
11:21 much harder time rooting i don't know if you can already see where the roots are going to come out
11:25 right here it's better if you can leave them attached to the mother plant and let that mother
11:31 plant feed like continue supplying what it needs to the baby until this one has a chance to root
11:37 into some soil and then at that point cut it off what is this what you doing
11:42 nothing did you get something do you get something new for your tractor
11:48 yes so in a situation where you have your strawberries planted in the ground it's really
11:52 easy to get these to root because everything is at the same level when you have something like this
11:56 it's really tall it gets a little bit trickier you can put a little baggie of soil around each
12:02 one of these like kind of rubber band some soil around this baby plant let it form roots as it's
12:06 dangling here and then usually it's four to six weeks after you do that after it makes contact
12:11 with the soil to the time where it starts forming up its roots so four to six weeks and then you can
12:16 clip it off so like today in our case i'm hoping to set up this vertical garden right next door to
12:21 this one so we can just run these runners over to the soil pin them down and they can just live next
12:28 to each other until those babies take root and then we can separate the two vertical gardens
12:32 and i think i'm going to clip off all the rest of the runners today whatever doesn't make it into
12:36 our other green stock so what we'll do here is we're just going to set our first layer down on
12:42 top of our lazy susan like that and make sure it's sort of level here we're going to do this one layer
12:51 at a time i'll fill this with soil i'm going to grab the runners bring them over here try to pin
12:56 down six of them and then we'll put the watering tray on and our next level and then we'll do the
13:02 yeah just every one every layer one at a time something i find handy when putting these
13:07 together so that a bunch of soil doesn't go through here i just put a little piece of tape on here
13:13 until i'm ready to do the next layer it helps and i've got my soil right here
13:42 yeah more sun right here i want to be on the north side of it
13:47 okay so we've got our soil in here you do want to tamp it down so that you don't have any settling
13:57 i've tamped it down pretty good i think and i haven't removed my tape yet but see this strawberry
14:03 right here this originates down in this pocket right behind it so we're going to take it and
14:08 kind of just nest it in the soil we don't push it down really far we're just going to nest it in
14:12 there and then use a landscape staple to tack it down like that that way it can't go anywhere
14:19 and the bottom of that plant will remain in contact with the soil oh so exciting okay let's do it again
14:28 so
14:30 okay so tray number one is done and i noticed that the runners on the bottom are far less robust as
14:49 the runners you find higher up like this one is huge so i did my best to find the ones that would
14:55 work well and you can see the runner coming over this way and then i've just used a three inch
15:00 landscape staple just to tack it down to where it's making contact with the soil but i did not
15:06 bury the plant so it's just contact with the soil and then just held in place with the landscape
15:11 staple so now at this point you take the tape off we're going to put our watering tray in
15:16 there are individual holes along the outside perimeter of this so i make sure that each hole
15:22 lines up with one of the planting pockets just kind of put that right there and then on goes our next
15:31 tray i think it's gonna take me a second hang on oh there's spiders
15:38 there i think we got it so very important we cannot rotate these at all for four to six weeks
15:46 until these root and i can cut all of the runners off so once they've rooted i can cut this off
15:52 and this off yeah and then we can start rotating them around so i'm hoping that once i clean this
15:58 up of all the extra runners that there will be enough light in between to get these going see
16:03 how they just kind of nest right on top of each other okay we're just going to do the same thing
16:07 all the way up
16:11 so
16:19 so
16:36 so
16:47 all done all 30 of these pockets are filled with babies oh it's just so exciting and there's really
17:05 no reason why any of these shouldn't take i mean you never know so i did leave a few little extras
17:10 hanging so you know if i should happen to lose that one i can pop it in its spot like this right
17:15 here this one reaches all the way over to here it was just getting a little difficult toward the end
17:20 to find runners long enough to reach from this side to that side take a look over here you can
17:27 see you know there's this runner here this one here but all of the pockets are filled up i love
17:36 it this is just the easiest most risk-free way of getting more strawberry plants from the ones you
17:42 already have because you know the mother plants are still going to be supporting these babies
17:46 while they form up roots and then like i said when they have formed them we can cut them off
17:51 from the supply and they can live on their own so now that that's done i'm gonna take after
17:56 the original here and we're gonna remove all of this business now one thing that i did find
18:03 see this pocket right here that's where the original plant was it sent out a runner look
18:08 at how huge this baby plant is i'm just gonna pop this right back up in here and nested into the
18:16 soil and it should root right there and take off so i'll just be inspecting every single one of the
18:22 pockets to make sure we've got viable plants and then i'll be trimming away the rest
18:37 so
18:47 so
19:09 so
19:22 so
19:36 all done all fertilized watered in everything is set to go so i just used a little sprinkle
19:49 of berry tone in each one of the pockets and then instead of watering i've already watered it from
19:53 overhead today so it's already you know saturated but just to get that fertilizer worked into the
19:59 soil i went ahead and just watered each one of the pockets and then i did the same thing i didn't do
20:03 the fertilizer but i did the watering the same here as well i watered it from top and i also
20:08 watered it from the tops and i will probably be watering the tops and keeping those moist
20:13 for a while now because you know the water is dripping out right here and it's probably going
20:18 to reach more of a root level of the plant and because these don't have roots yet i'll just make
20:23 sure that that top layer stays moist and we should be good to go so i left a few extras on
20:29 these plants as well just on this side of the green stock so that if we need them we can pop
20:36 them over there but for the most part cleaned them all up this plant the mother plant was looking a
20:42 little weak it's got a few little leaves but i used a runner from the top one and popped down
20:46 in the soil just to replenish that pocket that's the only one i had to do that with and then this
20:51 is what i cut off the plants so you can stick these down in soil i get little containers and
20:58 while it would be better if you know i lined up containers and just reached all of them over and
21:03 left them connected you can still give it a go and try to get them to root just in soil just
21:08 disconnected from the mother plant i might do a small tray but i might take them into this studio
21:13 where it's just a little bit cooler so that these leaves don't have to try to i mean it's hot in
21:18 here i don't know if you can see that but it's 101 in here right now and it's not going to stay
21:21 like that for very long we are supposed to be cooling down but putting a plant like this with
21:26 no roots yet in a 101 degree structure and expecting it to not flop over and wilt and die
21:32 that's a that's a tall order so i think we'll just fill up a few little containers just with some
21:37 i'm going to use the organic potting mix same stuff i used in the vertical garden and we'll
21:42 put them in the studio for a little while and see what we can get to grow i've had it work before
21:47 but it's best if you can leave them connected to the mother plant so let's pick through here i'm
21:51 just going to pick some of the biggest strongest looking ones and get them potted up
21:56 so
22:03 so
22:17 so
22:27 so
22:55 and there they are ever so precariously tucked into the soil because you just you don't want to
23:00 bury them too deep like look at this you really just want that area where the roots are going to
23:05 be to be under soil and once they you know form roots you can always take them out and make sure
23:10 that they're buried high enough but you know to get fruit you have to make sure that you do not
23:15 bury the crown of the plant so like in this case it will form roots right here and you'll want to
23:21 bury it just right there you don't want to bury it up to where the leaves start coming out of the
23:27 plant there's a fine line if you do that you won't get fruit so anyway they're just tucked in i watered
23:33 them out here so i'm going to let them drain then i'll take them into the studio where they can just
23:36 hang out where it's a little cooler and hopefully we'll get some rooting we'll see what happens and
23:41 it just makes me feel better to see these plants groomed up a little bit now they each have a
23:46 chance you know to get the proper amount of light we'll probably see a little surge of growth and
23:51 probably more berries before the end of the season i mean we've got quite a lot of our seasons still
23:55 left usually until the end of october even more and now that they're in here because we can keep
24:01 them in here a little bit longer before we pop them out but things are looking good i'm so excited
24:06 anyway that is it for today's project i just really wanted to get out here and get that project done i
24:11 knew i needed to groom the one that was already full of strawberries and it was perfect timing
24:16 because the other one that we put together today that was full previously of other things i had
24:20 some basil that was just like it was so overgrown and it was all bloomed out and then i had some
24:26 tomatoes in there that had gone wild i had also seeded some things we did uh initially i did it
24:31 completely full of seeds with radish cabbage carrots what else i have spinach we'd harvested
24:37 pretty much everything except for what the basil that was all done and then we got some beautiful
24:42 carrots out of there today i love that the pockets are deep enough that you can do some kind of root
24:47 vegetable production in something like this as well but i'm excited to have two of these full
24:52 of strawberries especially if we can extend our season a little bit in here for the kids have a
24:57 few more berries in here and then next year we will have these just hopefully going and just
25:03 producing berries like crazy so i hope you enjoyed this video and i hope it was helpful maybe to
25:07 those of you who are interested in growing strawberries in containers it really is a fun
25:12 thing to do i even love to tuck strawberries into ornamental arrangements you know if you've got some
25:17 real beautiful flowers but you've got a little space for something to spill over but maybe you
25:20 don't want something that's going to spill over hugely like a super tuna it's nice and kind of
25:25 like whimsical to see strawberry spilling out of ornamental containers like that i love that anyway
25:30 thank you guys so much for watching we'll see you in the next one bye