Grow Bountiful Strawberries In Your Garden With A Clever Pruning Trick

Strawberries are a delicious fruit that not only taste great, but are also good for you. With so many delicious benefits, it's not surprising that people want to grow these beautiful red berries in their gardens. There are many ways to grow the tastiest strawberries on the block – but with this clever pruning trick, you can increase your strawberry harvest to grow bountiful berries. Although it may be hard to resist when you have a craving for garden-fresh strawberries, skipping your first harvest and pinching all the flowers off before fruit develops will allow your plants' energy to go toward strengthening the root system. This pruning method will ultimately produce more strawberries.

There are three different types of strawberries you can choose for your garden: June-bearing, ever-bearing, and day neutral.  Each type has its own harvesting characteristics. June-bearing will give you the largest amount of strawberries per season in a short period of time, so if you want a lot of strawberries quickly, this is a good variety. Ever-bearing and day neutral varieties start flowering in the spring — about the same time that June-bearing plants do — but they will continue to flower and produce fruit. Ever-bearing will produce a crop in the summer and again in the fall, while day neutral will tend to produce throughout the growing season. Strawberry plants are versatile and do great in the garden, in hanging baskets, in containers, and even in your old laundry baskets, making them a great project for gardeners of any skill level.

Pruning is an important part of keeping your strawberries healthy, and the process isn't particularly complicated. If they are planted in the ground, you want to keep control of the runners as they can cover a lot of ground quickly. Cut off any runners you don't need, so this can directs the plants' energy to developing fruit instead foliage. You should leave some runners on the plant so you can use them as cuttings later. Train them by pressing the ends into the soil where you want them to form new roots, which will create a new daughter plant.

When pruning for increased harvest, you want to prevent the plants from growing fruit during the first harvest season after they are planted. For the June-bearing varieties, you will remove the all the little white flowers as they appear this first season. The next season they can flower and fruit normally, and your crop should be bountiful. For the other day neutral and ever-bearing varieties, remove all white flowers that appear until the end of June. After that, the plants can bloom and will have a nice harvest and lots of berries to enjoy. 

Timing matters as well. There are many plants that shouldn't be pruned in the fall, and one of them is strawberries. Cutting them back in the fall means that you could be cutting off newly forming flower buds in the June-bearing varieties and preventing your fall harvests in ever-bearing and day neutral types, and no gardener wants that!