My Aunt Renee always grew the family’s best strawberries in her garden in Corona, where she had a permanent strawberry patch near her garage. All she did each year was rake out a few old or dead plants and add new ones to fill gaps.
With a permanent strawberry patch, some time and work are saved because the alternative is to put in all new strawberry plants every winter. Nevertheless, a downside of the permanent strawberry patch is that it takes up garden space all year and requires irrigation during the months it is not producing berries, roughly late summer through fall and into winter.
So my way around this has been to interplant the strawberries during their off season, thereby still getting a harvest from that piece of ground and the water applied. I’ve interplanted in two ways.
Interplanting strawberries with vegetables
One approach has been to plant vegetables among the strawberries starting in summer once the strawberries slow in production. This summer, I planted corn among the strawberries.
Last summer, I planted tomatoes in one of the same beds of strawberries.
But I found that I should have planted the tomatoes a bit later than May. The strawberry plants were still producing well through June into July when the tomatoes had grown big and were shading the strawberries underneath and making it hard to pick them.
A few years ago, I planted brussels sprouts within a strawberry patch in late summer, but that didn’t work well. Brussels sprouts plants grow a few feet wide and tall, and they don’t start producing until winter, about the time that the strawberries again need sunshine because it’s their time to bloom and begin to fruit.
In summary, in a permanent strawberry bed, it seems best to plant vegetables that are going to get tall and find their own light above the strawberries. But you don’t want them to get big and shade out the strawberries until the strawberries are done with their main fruiting for the year; usually, that means not interplanting until sometime in June. And you want the interplants out of the strawberry patch in the winter when it’s time for the strawberries to resume growing and flowering.
Interplanting strawberries with fruit trees
There’s no reason to leave all of the ground beneath a fruit tree bare, and strawberries can get along well down there. I find it best to locate the strawberries near the southern edge of a tree’s canopy so they get lots of sun in the winter and early spring.
As long as the strawberry plants are placed within the irrigation zone of the fruit tree, I’ve found that the strawberries grow and produce well and the fruit tree needs no additional water.
(See more on this topic in my post, “Growing vegetables under fruit trees.”)
Seasons and timing
This week I’ll be removing the corn stalks that are among the strawberry plants in the photo above. We’ve eaten all the corn. It’s early September though, so I’ll be putting in some basil and lettuce seedlings between the strawberry plants. I’ll add some compost around the seedlings as I plant. The basil and lettuce should be harvested sometime in the fall, before the strawberries need full sun again.
I’ll also check for any strawberry runners that have rooted. I’ll transplant those to the southern edges of fruit trees.
That’s the strawberry work for the year, in a permanent patch, that is interplanted.
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Thank you for the good ideas. I was thinking last week about where I should move my strawberry plants. They multiplied a lot since I transplanted them last fall and I was thinking of moving the into more pots, but now I will plant some next to my trees.
I love this. Learning more from your experiments. This is the first year I’ve grown strawberries. I spread a flat out among my large pots. They are doing great under my potted citrus (moro, finger lime, satsuma). Also among dill, chard, and mint (expecting the latter to be an eventual choke-out). I’m in LAX area. Thank you!
I have a raised garden for strawberries year round and the plants are huge, green and don’t produce enough and the strawberries that do grow rot as soon as they are near the ground touching anything. I tried mulch, large perlite, hay. They just rot fast and have little slugs finding them. Any suggestions for bedding to prevent that? The ones that hang over sides of planter are fine. I know on farms they plant on mounds but have seen them fine on flat ground at other people yards.
Hi Bita,
I have some of these same problems with my strawberries. It seems partly due to bad luck according to the environmental conditions of a yard. I get jealous when I go to other yards and find their strawberries holding up much better.
A couple of factors seem to contribute. One is how moist the soil or mulch below the berries remains. I’ve noticed that people who have the fastest draining soil have the least rot and bug problems. We can’t change our soil, but we can water less frequently. And we can water with drip, which wets less of the soil/mulch surface compared to overhead watering. (Of course, there’s not much we can do about winter rains though.)
Another is bugs. My main bug problems for strawberries are pill bugs and earwigs. Both of them like the same habitat as slugs: dark and moist. So if the strawberry bed is dense with foliage, they’re in heaven. I’ve tried to keep my strawberry patches less dense by keeping some space between plants. I rake the beds and remove runners. This might help a little, can’t say for sure. I also run my chickens over the strawberry patch every so often to eat up some of the bugs. The chickens also eat the strawberries, unfortunately, but at least they eat some of the bugs too.
But what I’ve noticed is that still many of our early strawberries are always lost or imperfect. Yet, come June the crop always gets way better. The earwigs almost disappear, the weather is warm and dry, and the strawberries become so much more reliable. So in the spring I console myself with knowing that we’ll always get better strawberries in June.
There are products that kill the bugs that eat strawberries too. I’ve never used them, but I’m told that they’re effective.
So basil can be planted in September? Everything I can find says in SoCal to plant in May.
Hi Laura,
Definitely. You can start planting basil around May but continue all the way through September. I just put some new plants in a week ago.
Since we eat the basil leaves (not the fruit), they don’t need to be in the ground long before harvest starts so you can continue to plant them much later in the season than, say, tomatoes and still reap a large harvest before the weather cools too much.
Hi Greg,
Hope you and the family are keeping well and that you had a good Thanksgiving!
I wanted to ask if you had recommendations for strawberry varieties? I am in Irvine so my weather is slightly different than yours but I suspect it won’t make a lot of difference for strawberries.
There are a bunch of alpine strawberry varieties (from rareseeds) I’ve been trying to grow from seed but no luck so far 🙂 … I suspect I’m either burying the seed in too deep or I got dud packets of seeds. Most likely I’m doing something wrong – will keep trying 🙂
Anyway. If you have some suggested varieties, that would be lovely.
Hope you have a great holiday season and Merry Christmas in case I don’t end up commenting again.
Best,
-MB
Hi MB,
Thanks for the well wishes! I have grown alpine strawberries, but I’ve never started them from seed. I do love their flavor and texture though. I found that they needed a good amount of shade in my yard in order to be happy.
A few favorite strawberry varieties of mine to grow are Albion, Sequoia, and Chandler. I am going to plant some new strawberries this winter and I’ll definitely be planting Albion again, but I’m not sure which others I’ll try. I want to try some new ones too.
Thanks Greg! Will try to find these and plant over the next few weeks.
I noticed you grew tomatoes in your strawberry patch. I keep reading that one shouldn’t do it, planting strawberries and tomaties in the same area.You didn’t seem to have any issues. How did it work out?
Hi Lunar,
I’ve never had any problems with tomatoes and strawberries together. I wonder what the reason for not planting them together is.
Something about diseases I believe. Im glad to see it worked out for you. I may try with a planter myself.