Everbearing strawberries: Harvest strawberries all summer

Newly harvested strawberries, several different varieties. June 2018.

There are so many different varieties of vegetables, berries and fruit, all with their own special qualities. I’m especially interested in varieties that produce at different times of the year. That’s how I think about strawberries too.

I'm harvesting the early varieties right now. But I have plenty of other ones too. I don't even remember what all of them are called! I keep buying new plants every year to make sure that I'll have a lot of fresh strawberries available.

A few of my other varieties will bloom and start producing berries later in the season.

The strawberries ripen quickly in the summer heat, I need to pick them every day.

Flowers all season long

I’m really fascinated by one particular type of strawberry: the varieties that flower all season long! Most strawberry varieties flower only once. After that, the foliage grows larger as the plant prepares for the next season. But the varieties that keep blooming all season will also keep producing berries. You might even be able to harvest berries until the frost comes (the harvest will be smaller when it's cold though.) The varieties that produce flowers several times in a season are called everbearing strawberries.

I've decided to only use everbearing strawberries in my polytunnel. They are protected from wind and weather in there. As long as I remember to water them, the strawberries should produce lovely, sweet berries.

Growing everbearing strawberries is a really great idea if you want to make the berry season a little bit longer. If you have children, these are wonderful plants to tuck into little unexpected spots around the garden, like small treasures for the kids to discover in summer. Try growing the varieties Ostara, Toscana, Elan and Ruby Ann.

I hope you'll try growing everbearing strawberries in your own garden too! And don't forget to propagate your favorite varieties. I'll show you how it's done in the video above.
/Sara Bäckmo