Planting Our Sweet Summer Strawberries

If you’re wondering how to plant strawberry bare root plugs, it’s actually much easier than you might think. With a few simple steps and the right preparation, you can quickly get strawberry plants established and ready to produce fruit.

Recently I planted some Sweet Summer everbearing strawberry plugs from You Garden, and the process was straightforward and really enjoyable.

Here’s how I planted ours.

Why I Chose Sweet Summer Everbearing Strawberries

Everbearing varieties mean you can look forward to multiple harvests of strawberries throughout the growing season. They’re also well suited to pots, patios, and smaller gardens, which made them perfect for what we had in mind.

Preparing the Pots

Before planting anything, we started by preparing the containers. Strawberries don’t like sitting in soggy soil, so good drainage is really important.

To help with this, Jesse drilled several holes in the bottom of each pot. This allows excess water to drain away properly and keeps the roots healthy.

It’s a small step, but it makes a big difference when growing strawberries in containers.

Adding the Soil

Once the pots were ready, we filled them with the soil mixture that came with the strawberry plugs.

We gently loosened the soil before adding it to the pots to keep it light and aerated. Strawberries prefer soil that isn’t compacted, as it helps the roots spread out and establish more easily.

Planting the Bare Root Strawberry Plugs

Next came planting the bare root strawberry plugs themselves.

Each plant was carefully placed into the soil, making sure the roots were sitting naturally rather than bent or squeezed. The most important part is making sure the crown of the plant, where the leaves meet the roots, sits just above the soil surface.

Planting depth matters with strawberries:

• Too deep and the crown can rot

• Too shallow and the roots can dry out

Once everything was positioned properly, we gently filled in around the roots with soil and lightly firmed it down to hold the plant in place.

Watering Them In

After planting, I gave each pot a good watering to help settle the soil around the roots.

From here, the goal is simply to keep the soil moist but not waterlogged while the plants establish themselves.

Strawberries also love sunlight, so placing them somewhere that gets around 6–8 hours of sun a day will help them grow strong and produce plenty of fruit.

Looking Forward to the Harvest

Now that the plants are settled in their pots, it’s just a matter of giving them a bit of care and patience. With everbearing varieties like Sweet Summer, the reward should be multiple harvests throughout the growing season, rather than just one.

There’s something special about growing your own fruit, and I’m already looking forward to the moment those first bright red strawberries start to appear.

If you’ve ever thought about growing strawberries at home, bare root plugs are a really easy way to get started and they’re well worth the effort.