What is the Best Strawberry Variety to Grow?

Hello and thank you for joining me. Gardening can be a bit tricky and sometimes we just need a little bit of help and this can turn around a troubled garden, so let’s keep those gardens on track. Today, our question comes from Mary in Denver. Colorado, which is in zone five, and the question is, what is the best strawberry variety to grow?

So there’s three types of strawberry plants. There’s ever bearing, day neutral, and june Bearing. So the June Bearing strawberries they will put on fruit in the late spring or early summer. They will ripen all their berries within a four week window and then they’re done for the year. So June Bearing strawberries they will not fruit the first season that you plant them and they will start producing the strawberries the second year. I have grown the June Bearing plants and I find them to be very frustrating because I just don’t get enough strawberries.

So ever bearing strawberry plants will make a big crop in the spring, a light crop in the summer, and then maybe a light crop in the fall. Now the day neutral strawberries they will set fruit continuously as long as the plants are not dormant. So they will set fruit the first year. And I really like these because I can transplant them in the spring and still get a crop. So in our greenhouses we grow Day Neutral strawberries and have fruit from March until November. And I’m really a bit spoiled with my strawberries because I just love them. So then the plants they’ll go dormant because the greenhouses are cold in December, January and February. So for our production we only use day neutral varieties.

So there’s three reasons for this. I want to get strawberries this year and not wait a whole year. Number two. I can treat them more like annuals. I can transplant them and still get fruit within eight weeks. And number three. I like to eat fresh strawberries in the spring, summer and fall. So I love strawberries. Strawberry plants they are perennial in most locations in the world and this means that they will live through the winter if they do not get too dry. I confess I have killed more strawberry plants because they got too dry, not because it was too cold.

So there are several varieties of Day Neutral Strawberries. I find the flavor will vary with the different types, and I grow a variety called Seascape, and I’ve grown this variety for over 14 years and I’ve gotten to know its habits, what it likes, and how it performs. I also know what color the berry needs to be to have the highest flavor. Seascape has to be almost burgundy before you harvest it just to get that super intense flavor. And because I’ve worked with this one plant for so many years. I can really get it to produce well for me. But before I settled on this one. I grew about eight other varieties and Seascape had the best flavor and performance. So I recommend the Day Neutral Strawberry varieties as the very best ones to grow and Seascape is the top of that list. There are many more day neutral varieties of strawberry and some of the most popular are:

Albion