First time for everything! I’ve been sharing my love of strawberries for years, and my desire to have a strawberry patch. After years of learning about strawberries and how to grow them in this area, I think I finally have it figured out. This was the year!! Well, maybe…

I’ve got 5 raised beds set aside for my patch…about 150sq’ (+/-). They have great soil, well amended with about 30 – 35% coarse sand. I have a few plants carried over from last year…those were my test plants…proof of concept. I have settled on two varieties that should do well in the area…Albion (2 beds – 29 plants) and Eversweet (3 beds – 51 plants). Since I can’t afford 80 live plants to start with I decided to try out bare root strawberry plants…50 of them…½ & ½ of the two varieties.

An example of what quality bare root strawberry plants should look like.

I ordered the bare root plants from a vendor on Etsy…HandPickedNursery. It was a nightmare! Before I ordered them I asked the vendor what kind of shipping timing was I looking at. Their response “2 to 3-day processing time but usually ship right away.” Great…I placed the order.

The shipping information looked like they shipped within 4 days…okay, nothing special. But, ah, wrong! All they did was create a shipping label. I asked about that and they assured me they were shipped within 2 business days. Ah, wrong again. After 6 days I was just a wee bit upset…and messaged them. They were sorry that the process wasn’t “meeting my expectations”. Oh boy!

So…it wasn’t “1 – 2 days” to ship…it was 8. Then another 5 days to arrive. 13 days total. Yeah, not good. Their customer service was terrible. Then I looked at the plants…ouch. Now, remember I’ve never worked with bare root strawberry plants so I am not an expert on it by any stretch of the imagination. But, it looks as if only about ½ the plants have survived. Time will tell if more do well, but I am not hopeful.

Here’s what arrived…two rather shabby looking bags of supposedly dormant bare root strawberry plants.

Here’s what they look like while I re-hydrated them. You only re-hydrate for 1 – 2 hours…and only place the roots in the water.
Yes, to me the plants look terrible.

Raised bed boxes all prepped, soil amended, raked & leveled out…ready to go. Yes, I know…I need to do a bit of weeding outside of the boxes. That comes later before the veggies go in.

I use my hoe and simple draw my rows to ensure I get the row spacing right.

Then I come back and dig my holes properly spaced and deep enough. At this time I also add about 1/2 teaspoon of organic fertilizer in the bottom of the hole. I use a 4-4-4 fertilizer. I stir it around.
Next, I place a plant in each hole in one row.

Then I place each plant properly in the hole making sure to not bury the “crown”. I also make sure I fluff out the roots before putting them in the hole. I also make sure that the hole is plenty deep enough for the longest plant root.
Then mulch them in with wood chips, add drip irrigation…and done!

In a couple of days I will post an article that covers planting the live plants.

Why did I buy “bare root”? $1.21 per plant vs. $2.85 per plant. And the $2.85 was a “special” price for me…almost half-price to be exact. Normally, live strawberry plants run about $5 per plant.

And “No!” I will never ever do business with HandPickedNursery again…EVER!

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