Today we're talking about strawberries and how to winterize them so that they actually survive and you get them next spring.

Why do we need to do this? Well, most types of strawberries

require at least two to three hundred chill hours and they do want relatively

cold temperatures. We're talking slightly above freezing to about 45 degrees. That's most you don't need it and

certainly in warmer regions like my own. There are plenty of varieties that can do just

fine without having that. But temperatures of about 15

degrees Fahrenheit or below can permanently damage the plant and so if you live in

a region where the ground actually freezes you should do a few simple things to protect them because you want to avoid damage to the next springs buds, you want to minimize root damage from temperature fluctuations, you want to inhibit heaving. That's what happens when you have

soil shifting during freezing and thawing that can push the plant up out of the ground. And then

you want to keep those crowns protected. So what should you do?

The first thing to know is that you've got a couple of different types of strawberries.

You have your June-bearing varieties that form buds in the fall, bloom in the spring, and then they produce a harvest in June.

Ever-bearing form buds when the days are long, and they produce three harvests a year,

and then day-neutral will flower and produce fruits

throughout the growing season as long as the temperatures are above 35 and below

85. So after you harvest plants that you want to overwinter you need to sort of clean them up a bit

prune foliage thin remove debris and weeds if you have June bearing varieties prune that foliage to about one or two inches above the crown.

Not the ground, but the crown.

If you have a large flat strawberry patch, this is kind of fun, you can actually just use a lawnmower with a blade set to the appropriate height and you just boom mow right over and you're good to go. It's pretty fun. You can remove runners and discard anything that has been weakened, diseased, or infested with pests.

So really this is just the cleanup phase.

The next thing you'll want to do is just fertilize.

You can give it a 10 10 all around fertilizer,

...