Gardeners anticipating their first delicious strawberry crop may worry about every step of the growing process, from the initial choice between June-bearing or fall-bearing varieties to selecting a fertilizer. In fact, strawberries (Fragaria spp.) are among the easiest fruits to grow in your backyard, according to Sunset Magazine. Correctly planted berry plants require only water, sun and occasional fertilizer to thrive in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 3 though 9. Pollinating your strawberry blossoms is rarely a problem.
Select self-fertile strawberry plants for your berry patch. The flowers of most commercially available strawberry bushes have both male and female reproductive organs. These berry bushes are self-fertile, requiring only that the pollen transfer between parts of the same flower. The vast majority of fruit production is due to abiotic factors, such as gravity and wind.
Attract honeybees to pollinate strawberries, if you want a bumper crop. To attract bees, provide sugar water during the entire spring and summer seasons and plant other flowers that bees love. Grow your strawberry plants outdoors rather than in a greenhouse, which is less accessible to bees. Keep pesticides to an absolute minimum. If nothing else works, rent a honeybee hive from bee farmers for the season.
Pollinate your strawberry blossoms yourself. Use a tiny paintbrush to transfer pollen from the flower's male stamens to the female pistils. The numerous tiny pistils are grouped on a stem in the center of the blossom. The stamens are the parts of the flower covered in pollen. Act soon after a flower blossom opens for best results.
- Although commercial berry producers cannot rely on feral bees to pollinate their many acres of strawberry crops, gardeners with small berry patches do not face the same problem. Many times there are enough pollinating insects to do the job.
- Argyle Alternative High School: Hand Pollination of Strawberry Blossoms
- University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources: Bug Squad -- Berry, Berry Fine!
- Monrovia: Quinualt Strawberry
- Bio-Bee Biological Systems: Pollination of Strawberry
- Master Gardeners Santa Clara County: Growing Strawberries for the Home Garden
- Australian Government RIRDC: Pollination -- Strawberries
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