The Great Strawberry Hunt

General Fruit Growing
1

We have had honeoye strawberries for three years now, we got them bare root in a bundle with grapes and raspberries from Costco.

I’m really not impressed with the strawberries from them (some are downright funky tasting, even though they look fine) and I feel like three years is a fair trial, what do you guys think?

I have them in two 4’ x 4’ raised beds. I even bought “big ass berry” overpriced fertilizer last year, and we still haven’t had great results. We are in zone 8A Mediterranean climate.

Recently, I got a small bundle of Chandler and a small bundle of San Andreas, a lot of the San Andreas didn’t make it. I feel like they had something wrong with them to begin with, but the Chandler are doing well, and we have gotten a couple of pretty good berries off of Chandler.

Last month during a sale I got a lot of the Carolina Pineberry bare root for a very good price, We planted them recently, so we’ll see what we think of those when we have berries to try.

I was trying to figure out what to replace our Honeoye strawberries with, and I decided on getting 8 Mara des Bois, and 8 Florida Pearl strawberry plants to put two rows of four of each in the two 4 x 4 raised beds I have.

With the honeoye strawberries, I had them planted in 12 in.² so there were 16 plants in each 4 x 4 and it seems harder to manage and a little crowded. I was thinking with two rows of four there might be less strawberries, but we can identify daughters right away and as soon as they root, we can remove them and put them in a pot for safekeeping.

Buying the 16 total potted plants is very pricey, but as much as bare root seems to be a good deal, I also don’t want a zillion of something if I am not even sure I like it and also a better guarantee on a live plant not to mention the cost of raised beds and soil for a high quantity of bare root plants. I know because I just paid a ton of money for a large raised bed for asparagus. I was OK with that because I already know I love it and we will eat a ton of it every year. If I find one strawberry variety that is outstanding for us,I will try to figure out how to afford more room for that variety.

I think it will be fine to start with 8 of each and if I love them, they will make daughters at some point. And if we don’t love them, there’s a lot less plants to rehome or do something else with.

My husband is going to try putting the Honeoye in our own dirt with amendments. He bought some little tunnels from Temu for this experiment so that wasn’t a huge investment.

Anyone have any thoughts on what we could be doing wrong? Anyone here love honeoye and have good results or not so good results?

Main thing for me is they need to be really good strawberries. They need to be worth the costs of care and our time. I don’t want a ton of mediocre strawberries I’d rather have a smaller amount of really memorable ones.

3 Likes
2

Water affects fruit quality with strawberries to an almost obscene degree (both under- and over-watering) so that would be my first guess, but I’d also be interested to know what sort of results you get on an at-home soil test, which can be done pretty cheaply (not as good as the send-away type, but I’ve done both and found that even the at-home ones are pretty accurate). Packaged soil quality varies widely, I’ve found. You could also try worm castings or compost in lieu of commercial fertilizer. I’ve never found those berry blends to work very well.

Curious to hear what others think, but I also do wonder whether you might want to give bare root plants from a more specialized nursery a shot at some point.

1 Like
3

We used happy frog in our raised beds and after the big ass berry fertilizer flop, I put some holly-tone in this year and the plants looked super healthy and grew big, but I don’t know how that relates to berry quality maybe I just grew a bunch of fantastic leaves lol. We also did have bigger and nicer looking berries, but the flavor really wasn’t that great.

My husband usually checks how wet the soil is before watering. I don’t think he ever let it get too dry or soggy. He recently bought one of those soil probes for moisture, but I worry about them damaging roots.

I believe he ran a soil test, but it was just for pH.

4

I agree about the Honeoye. They tasted like bubblegum. Just horrible. Planted them once, never again. I like the Maras varieties. True strawberry flavor.

5

I would think that if you do not like the flavor then there probably isn’t much you are going to be able to change about that. I think you are on the right track trying out other varieties

I have about 100 strawbs across 3 raised beds and I started with the same spacing you described. Once the plants matured the spacing has always felt a little too tight so I refurbished 1 of the 3 beds to a less dense spacing

Good luck!

6

Hi!

Did you end up getting any fruit from the Carolina Pineberry? I just got 2 plants today and am wondering if it was a good idea and/or what to expect.

I am in Z10 in SoCal FWIW.

7

I wish I could answer that question, but they never woke up.

The roots were bare in a paper bag and arrived super dry.

I have not replaced them, please let me know how yours do.

The Mara de bois really took off though.

1 Like
8

Mara de Bois strawberry tasted great for me lasted all season long. It stopped making berries like in late September with medium sized berries.

Tony

3 Likes
9

Will do! I got them as plants in pots so I’m hoping they survive!

10

i am in zone 8, hot and humid
I ran an everbearing strawberry trial with
San Andreas
Albion
Charlotte
Festival
Cabrillo
Chandler
Eversweet

Charlotte was the clear winner. Produced a spring and fall crop. a summer crop here is too much to expect. stood up to the heat and heavy rain.
Grown in 4x8 raised boxes, standard potting mix with 10 percent sand added.
Cabrillo was a stunning plant, big and healthy but did not bloom well.
The rest just suffered along in the heat or died of overwatering.

1 Like