How to Grow Strawberries in Containers (Beginner Guide)

Strawberries have shallow roots, so you want a container that's wider than it is deep. A metal tub, a half-barrel, a grow bag, or even a hanging basket all work. The one rule that matters: it needs drainage holes in the bottom. Drill four or five if your container doesn't have any, because strawberries rot in soggy soil.

If you plan to run drip irrigation, feed the tubing up through one of the drain holes now, before any soil goes in. Leave yourself a generous length to work with. Doing this first saves you from digging around in wet soil later.

Skip garden soil. It compacts hard in a container and strawberries hate that. Reach for a bagged organic potting mix instead. It stays light and drains well, which is exactly what these plants want. A wide tub like this takes around two and a half cubic feet, so plan on a couple of bags.

Pour it in and level it off. Leave an inch or two of space below the rim. That gap makes watering easier and gives you room for the straw mulch that goes on at the end.

Work a slow-release berry fertilizer into the mix before you plant. Follow the rate on the bag, usually about two cups per cubic foot of soil. Blend it through with your gloved hands so it's spread evenly, not sitting in one clump.

An easy trick: add half the soil, mix in some fertilizer, then add the rest and mix again so it reaches the whole root zone. A slow-release organic feed like this is forgiving, so a little over or under won't hurt the plants.

Set your plants in, spacing them about eight to ten inches apart. You can crowd them a little closer in a container than you would in the ground. Six plants fit comfortably in a 24-inch tub.

Depth is the part people get wrong. The crown is the spot where the stems meet the roots. It has to sit right at soil level, never buried. Bury it and the plant rots; plant it too high and the roots dry out. With potted starts, just match the existing soil line and firm each one in well.

Strawberries like steady moisture but hate wet leaves and wet berries, which invite powdery mildew and rot. Watering at the root zone beats watering overhead. Coil a length of drip tubing with half-gallon-per-hour emitters around the plants, connecting it to the tube you ran through the drain hole earlier.

Pin it down with a few landscape staples so it stays put, and cap the open end with a goof plug. In a container this size, three emitters or a curled emitter line covers all six plants.

Spread a layer of straw over the soil around the plants. This is what gives strawberries their name, and it does real work. When the berries form, they rest on dry straw instead of damp soil, so they stay clean and don't rot.

The straw also blocks slugs from crawling up to the fruit and acts as a barrier between the soil and the berries. Tuck it in around each crown, but keep it off the crown itself.

That's the whole planting done. Six strawberry plants tucked into a wide tub, fed, watered at the roots, and mulched with straw. Ever-bearing types like these give you two harvests, one in early summer and another later in the season, so you get fresh berries over a long stretch.

Cut off any runners the first year. They pull energy away from the plant that you want going into fruit and roots. If a runner reaches the ground it will root and take off, so keep them trimmed while the plants settle in.

Strawberries need six to eight hours of sun to fruit well. The best part of growing in a container is that it moves. If one corner of the yard gets more light, slide the tub there. Set it on pot feet or risers if it's sitting on a hard surface so water drains freely and the drip tube doesn't kink.

Through the season, keep the soil consistently moist but never soggy, keep it in full sun, and give a light feed mid-season. That's the whole routine. Do that and you'll be picking sweet berries by summer.