Plant strawberries about 2 weeks before your last frost, 15 inches apart in rows 36 inches apart, and expect fruit the season after planting for June-bearers. Good companions are spinach, lettuce, onions and thyme; keep brassicas away. Bare-root crowns must sit exactly at soil level.
Strawberry companion plants
Good neighbours, and why.
Spinach and lettuce occupy the ground between young strawberry plants and are gone before the runners need the space — a genuine use of time rather than a claimed chemical effect. Onions and garlic are the traditional strawberry edging; the mechanism usually claimed is scent confusing pests, which is weakly evidenced, but the practical benefit is real enough: they occupy the row edge without competing for the same rooting depth. Thyme and borage flower early and draw pollinators, and strawberry fruit is misshapen when flowers are poorly pollinated, so this one has a clear mechanism.
Bad neighbours, and why.
Brassicas — cabbage, broccoli, kale — are the main ones to keep away. They are heavy feeders rooting in the same shallow band, and a full-grown cabbage shades a plant that needs sun on its fruit. Tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and aubergines matter for a different and more serious reason: all of them share Verticillium wilt with strawberries, and the fungus persists in soil for years. Do not plant strawberries into ground that grew any of them recently, whatever the spacing.
Whether companion planting works at all is worth reading alongside this, because the honest answer differs sharply between the pairings above.
How far apart to plant strawberries
15 inches between plants, 36 inches between rows.
That looks generous for a plant you can hold in one hand, and it is correct. June-bearing varieties send out runners that root and fill the gaps within a single season — the matted row system relies on exactly that. Plant them closer and the row becomes a congested mat with small fruit and poor air movement.
Day-neutral varieties are a different system. They are grown in hills with runners cut off as they appear, so they never spread, and can be set closer at around 12 inches.
The plant spacing calculator will tell you how many plants a given bed takes at either spacing.
When to plant
About two weeks before your last frost, as dormant bare-root crowns. Strawberries are hardier than their fruit suggests and go in while the ground is still cold — the plant establishes roots before it is asked to do anything else.
Potted plants are the exception and go in later, once growth has started, because they are already in leaf and have no dormancy to protect them.
An autumn planting also works in mild areas and gives a better first crop, since the plant has the whole winter to root. The planting date calculator works both out from your own frost dates.
Do not let June-bearers fruit in their first year. Pinch off the first season's flowers. It feels wasteful and it doubles the second year's crop, because the plant spends that energy on roots and runners instead.
Planting bare-root crowns
This is how most strawberries are sold, and it is where most of them are killed.
Soak the roots in water for about an hour before planting — no longer, or they drown. Dig a hole wide enough to fan the roots downwards and outwards rather than curling them into a spiral.
Then get the crown height exactly right. The crown is the swollen base where roots meet leaves, and its midpoint must sit level with the soil surface. Buried, it rots. Proud of the surface, it dries out and the plant fails. Firm the soil, water in, and check the height again after watering, because plants settle.
Growing strawberries in containers
Strawberries suit pots better than almost any other fruit, and a container lifts the fruit clear of slugs and mud.
Allow at least 8 inches of depth and 10 to 12 inches of width per plant, or a trough with plants 10 inches apart. The roots are shallow, so width matters more than depth here. Hanging baskets work well for day-neutral varieties, which keep producing rather than cropping once.
The trade-off is water. A container holds a limited reservoir, strawberries crop badly when checked for water, and fruit set suffers first. Expect to water daily in summer, and use a soil-less potting mix rather than garden soil.
Soil, water and feeding
Strawberries want slightly acid soil, around pH 5.5 to 6.5, full sun, and free drainage. Raised beds suit them for the drainage alone — waterlogged crowns rot. If your soil is alkaline and fruit is pale with yellowing leaves, how to lower soil pH covers the correction and its timescale.
Water about an inch a week, more in fruiting weeks, and aim at the soil rather than the fruit — wet berries mould.
Feed after harvest, not before. Nitrogen applied in spring gives leaf at the expense of fruit. The feed that matters is the one after cropping finishes, which builds the crown for next year.
Renovate each year. After the last fruit, cut the old foliage back, thin crowded plants, narrow the row, and top-dress with compost. Then replace the whole bed every three or four years — plants crop best in years two and three and decline after that.
Harvest
Pick when the berry is fully red all over, including the shoulders by the stem. Strawberries do not ripen further once picked, so an early berry stays sour.
Pick with the stem attached, pinching rather than pulling, and pick every day or two in the season — a ripe berry left one extra day is a berry the slugs and birds find first. Morning picking gives better keeping quality than afternoon.
The garden yield estimator gives a realistic range for a planting of a given size.
Common problems
Grey mould on the fruit. Botrytis, worse in wet weather and crowded rows. Improve air movement by thinning, straw-mulch under the fruit so it never touches soil, and remove affected berries rather than leaving them to spread.
Slugs. They find fruit before you do. Straw mulch, containers, or going out at dusk are the practical answers; the raised fruit in a pot or hanging basket avoids the problem entirely.
Birds. Netting is the only thing that reliably works, and it has to be held clear of the fruit rather than laid on it.
Yellow leaves with green veins. Iron deficiency induced by alkaline soil, not a shortage of iron in the ground. Lowering pH fixes it; adding iron to alkaline soil mostly does not.
Strawberries pair well in a bed with spinach early in the season, and share their acid-soil preference with blueberries.