Growing Strawberries

Sun-sweetened strawberries, still warm from the garden, top nature's menu of fine desserts. Just a few rows of plants will fill your fruit bowl and freezer, even after you subtract the samples you sneak while picking. By growing different varieties, you can enjoy the luscious bounty of a strawberry patch from spring until fall frost.

There's a strawberry for every season and every region. Some set fruit during shorter spring days, while others need long summer days to bear. A few produce all season, regardless of sunlit hours. Their name may promise nonstop harvests, but everbearing strawberries actually produce two separate crops each year: one in June, and a second yield of smaller berries in early fall. Demanding a long growing season, everbearers are best suited to warm climates. June-bearing varieties ripen in early- or mid-summer.

Recommended for short-season northern gardens, they offer a bigger summer bounty than everbearers, but plants stop fruiting after the first harvest. Newer day-neutral types win rave reviews universally for tireless spring-to-fall performances.

Grow pretty Pink Panda as an everblooming, edible ground cover in sun or partial shade.

Wild cousins of large garden cultivars, Europe's fraises des bois (strawberries-of-the-woods) produce handfuls of tiny berries all summer if plants are kept watered.

Berry production never goes on holiday, thanks to this hardworking day-neutral variety that fruits from spring to frost.

Chefs savor this alpine for its intense taste. Because the berries are fragile, they're best eaten fresh from the patch.

Named for its distinct flavor, this alpine bears cream-yellow fruits the first year if seeds are sown early indoors.

While most alpines won't wander, this wild one sends runners cascading over rocks at the edge of a woodland garden.