Does anyone have any tips for growing strawberry plants in containers, specifically in 3.5 square or deep nursery pots to start? I would say about roughly half of the bare root plants from Stark Bros., MIGardener, Indiana Berry and Innovative Organic Nursery planted into nursery pots have not broken dormancy. This year I mixed in peat moss to lower the acidity, added light straw mulch, added granular and liquid AgroThrive fertilizer, planted them with the crown above soil level and kept them watered but not soaked. I seem to have better luck planting them into larger containers, such as a one-gallon nursery pot. Online there are tons of examples of people who are successful with growing strawberries in containers and vertical planters but perhaps this is not as easy to do in zone 6 and the best way to plant them is either directly in the ground or a raised bed or in a one-gallon nursery pot or larger.
bigger pots are better but be prepared to water 2 -3xs daily on hot days. they dry quickly and dried plants have small berries. raised beds work alot better for me.
hort americas says that from research, each plant needs 2L of growing medium for optimal growth.
I can manage watering twice a day, before and after work but three times a day would be challenging.
I assumed that nurseries use the 3.5 square pots to grow bare root strawberries but perhaps they start them at an earlier stage.
Hoping the potted bare root plants make it in my original GreenStalk or I’m probably done with trying to grow them in a vertical planter.
I tried them last year and found them to be easy to grow. I put them in a 3g pot but I would just go 2g especially if you will restart the next year. My potting soil is 1/3 peat and the rest minerals. I propagated some runners and left them basically soaking in a tray all winter and those runners are fruiting now 
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I’m going on my third year growing them in pots. I have them in one and three gallon pots. I intend to water this year, but in the past I never did anything for them.
I have considered that I just suck at planting bare root strawberries. 
My mix- peat moss, pine fines, pine bark, Diatomaceous Earth and ProMix.
All runners and flowers pinched for year 1.
Fert on year 2 before flowering and fruiting. Fresh dressing of pine fines on top.
No real need to water much if at all… as the peat, pine fines and pine bark once saturated as well as the DE retain moisture to sustain until the next rainfall. ProMix has enough nutrients to get me thru until fert.
YMMV but thats what works for me.
yeah. cant get pine bark/ fines here and all the mixes i have dont hold water as well as yours would. i use pro mix also but by itself with some compost still doesnt hold moisture well.
i got my recipe from Drew… it works well here… not sure about other places etc.
Have you tried adding coir? I’m new to strawberries, but filled wooden beds on my insanely hot deck using coir, compost, pine nugget, vermiculite and perlite along with some amendments, and I have only watered maybe 3-4 times in the last 6-8 weeks. We have had a lot of rain, but even when it’s just 65 and sunny, my deck is 90-100.
I would say this to be only true for June-bearing varieties.
For everbearing, only the first set or few sets depending on the size of the plant needs to be pinched and that’s if you want to.
Personally, I’ve found not much of a difference when letting everbearing do their thing vs pinching off the first few sets. This is in regards to the entire season, not just for the month or so.
To me they seem happiest in 3 gallons for year 1-2 plants and 5 gallon deep pots after the 3rd year.
I’ve been told they lose productivity after a couple of years but mine are still going strong at year 3 and some at 4. It just depends on how much you decide you wanna feed them while they’re flowering and fruiting i guess
no i havent. because im on the canadian border, peat is half the price of coir.
What do you feed them? I read somewhere that kelp was a good fertilizer for strawberries…
Captain Jack’s fertilizers, Neptune fish fertilizer, osmocote, whatever i see at the time when I’m looking for something water soluble lol. Low strength though, anywhere from 1/4 to less than 1/2 of the recommended amount because i fertilize more often than recommended. Or even just a few drops of the liquid stuff every few waterings
Thank you all for the suggestions. I am nearly at the end of the season now for growing strawberries from bare root and will try some of these next year.
How about how much sun they receive? I had several “survivors” on a flat the past couple days and highs only in the low 70s in full sun and at the end of the day they were wilted and did not rebound the next day.