Strawberry

Family

Rosaceae

Habit

perennial

Height

0.3 m

Spread

0.2 m

Growth

fast

Lifespan

5 years

First yield

after 1 year

Full yield

after 2 years

Productive years

4 years

Yield per plant

up to 0.5 kg a year

Yield in cultivation

up to 6 t/ha

Energy yield

130 kcal per m² a year

Hardiness

zone 5–8

Shade tolerance

partial shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

semi-dry – very moist

pH

5.5 – 7

Synonyms

Erdbeere, Erdbeeren

Planned in gardens

3×

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: Fruit - raw. The best varieties have sweet and juicy fruits with a delightful flavor. Strawberries are a highly popular fruit, easily found during the summer season. Some varieties have fruits with a diameter of up to 3 cm. Young leaves can be eaten raw.

Strawberries want deep, free-draining soil that nevertheless holds moisture, rich in humus and nutrients, at pH 5.5 to 6.5. Full sun is what brings the crop; in partial shade the plant grows well enough but sets far less fruit. Shelter from wind helps, and late frosts threaten the blossom. A mulch keeps the fruit dry and clean — conifer needles or lava grit both work, while oat straw is unsuitable because it carries stem eelworm. Most cultivars respond to day length and crop once a year; everbearing types fruit through the summer. Stands tire: fruit size and plant health fall off after two or three years as soil-borne diseases and aphid-transmitted viruses accumulate. Every few years, then, a new bed is started in a fresh position, leaving several years before strawberries return to the same ground. Bush beans, spinach, borage, lettuce and garlic all make good companions.

The garden strawberry propagates by runners, and that is also the only way to keep a cultivar true: being an octoploid hybrid, its seedlings come out uneven. Sowing is worth it only for breeding new varieties — germination drags on for four weeks or more and the seedlings start very slowly. Runners root by themselves once their leaf rosettes touch soil; pin them down with a wire, or set them straight into a sunken pot. Sever them in July or August so the young plants root in by autumn and crop the following year; plants separated later will not bear until a year after that. Choosing the parent matters: take runners only from healthy, strongly cropping plants, because virus diseases travel along with them.

The strawberry flowers in spring, offering nectar and pollen just as wild bees are provisioning their first brood cells; its nectar is rated two out of four and its pollen one. The relationship runs both ways: strawberries are self-fertile, yet insect pollination raises both yield and fruit quality markedly — poorly pollinated flowers give small, misshapen berries. Honey bees, bumblebees and mining bees are among the main visitors. As a garden hybrid with no native range, however, it has no specialist species tied to it and feeds no caterpillars. Anyone wanting to do more for insects than provide pollination is better served by the native wild strawberry. That ripe fruit appeals to birds as well is evident from the netting standard in commercial growing.

Special features: mulch of lava chippings or pine needles so the fruit lies dry+warm; highly attractive to slugs; yields far higher in other countries (Spain 35t/ha, USA 50t/ha); good neighbours are bush beans, spinach, borage, lettuce, garlic; a less demanding ground cover with stronger medicinal use is wild strawberry F. vesca

A garden hybrid with no natural range; arose in 18th-century Europe. The garden strawberry is not a wild species but a chance cross between two American species: the Chilean strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis) and the scarlet strawberry (Fragaria virginiana). It came about in European gardens during the 18th century and is octoploid, with 56 chromosomes. It therefore has no natural distribution area — where it grows today is simply where it is cultivated. World production in 2021 came to 9.175 million tonnes, led by China (3.38 m t), the United States (1.21 m t) and Turkey (669,000 t); Germany ranked 13th with 130,630 tonnes.

Being purely a cultivated plant, the garden strawberry has no natural habitat; it occurs nowhere in the wild. Where it turns up outside beds it is a garden escape, holding on by runners along path edges and banks without forming lasting populations. Its site requirements derive from the American parent species, which grow in coastal dunes and open woodland: deep, free-draining soil that still holds moisture, rich in humus and nutrients, at pH 5.5 to 6.5, with full sun and shelter from wind. Late frosts threaten the blossom. By way of contrast, the native wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca) occupies woodland margins and clearings and makes the less demanding ground cover.