Strawberries in Pots

I'm growing strawberries for fruit at home for the first time this year. Most of my previous experience of growing strawberries has been with wild strawberries, propagating them from runners to sell as plants when I worked at a herb nursery. So now, trying out more commercial varieties with the aim of producing fruit feels like a leap of faith - will the berries get eaten by pests? Will I get a reasonable crop? Will the plants produce anything at all? The thought of eating home-grown strawberries, juicy, sweet and sun-warmed, was enough to convince me that the expense of buying the plants was worth it, especially as my previous efforts to grow alpine strawberries from seed have always failed (not enough constant heat I think).

The next leap was to decide which variety to grow and where. When I bought the plants I didn't know I would be lucky enough to get my hands on an allotment, so due to lack of flower-bed space in my garden I thought it better to grow my strawberries in pots. This also meant I could make the most of the sunniest aspect of the garden, which is largely taken up by a patio.

Rather than pin all my hopes of glorious fruit on one variety I decided to grow a range of different strawberries, both as a way to extend the cropping season (hopefully), and to try out a selection of types to find my favourite.

So this year I'm growing:

'Honeoye' - An early season variety with tolerance of powdery mildew and botrytis. It is supposed to be productive and vigorous. Hopefully tasty too!

'Red Gauntlet' - This is a mid-season variety which may produce a second crop later on (in September) if the summer is good. Apparently it is really sweet and tasty and has excellent disease resistance.

'Mara des Bois' - I'm most excited about this one, a perpetual-fruiting strawberry which combines the flavour of a wild strawberry with the yield and fruit size of a modern cultivar. It is resistant to powdery mildew, but may not be as productive as other varieties.

'Sophie' - A late season variety producing high yields of good quality fruit.


I bought my strawberry plants in 9cm pots from the garden centre where I work, but many varieties are also available as bare-root plants by mail-order ready for potting earlier in the year.

At the beginning of April I potted three plants of each variety into multi-purpose, peat free compost in some large plastic pots and watered them in well, picking off any flowers on the plants to encourage root growth. As they grow I'll feed them with an organic liquid plant feed and make sure the compost doesn't dry out - no problem at the moment with so much rain! They all seem to be putting on plenty of growth so far, especially the 'Sophie' plants which are producing very large leaves.

Strawberries from left to right: Red Gauntlet, Honeoye, Mara des Bois, Sophie