This strawberry plant produced fruit despite being stuck in a small nursery pot – here’s why!
Last autumn, I propagated this strawberry plant from a runner using the cut-root-and-pot method. It got fully established by the end of October, but it was too late to move it into the garden. So I kept it inside my miniature greenhouse over the winter (along with many others) in a small nursery pot – just 10 cm tall and 8 cm wide…
My plan was to move it into the garden in spring, as soon as the weather warmed up. But I completely forgot about it. And now, after more than half a year of neglect, it has started flowering, and even fruiting, in a pot it had long outgrown!
Root-bound and forgotten, but still producing strawberries!
It is not uncommon to see strawberry plants flower in small nursery pots. You can see that every spring in plant nurseries and garden centers. But seeing those flowers go all the way to fruit? That is rare. Honestly, I had never seen that happen before!
Yet here they are. Three full-sized strawberries hanging from a plant that has been root-bound for months. It is like this plant doesn’t even care that it has no space to stretch its roots!
So, what kept it going against all odds?
The answer is simple. The potting mix. Or more specifically, one ingredient in the mix that made all the difference: earthworm castings!
Now, the thing about earthworm castings is they are an incredibly powerful plant food. I’m not surprised they carried this strawberry plant through all those long months from October until almost June. But they didn’t just keep it alive. They kept it fed, fed enough to flower, and to turn those flowers into fruit. And not just one fruit, but three full-sized strawberries, and counting!
What is also interesting is that this plant had already flowered earlier in the season. I cut those flowers off (once, maybe even twice) to stop it from wasting energy. But even after that, there was still enough nutrition left in the soil for it to try again. And this time, it followed through, only because I forgot to stop it.
So, if you are growing strawberries in containers (or anything else really), consider adding earthworm castings to your potting mix. It’s the kind of slow, steady nutrition that keeps plants going when they are stuck in a too-small pot. It has been my go-to fertilizer for years, and honestly, it is pretty much the only one I use when raising vegetable seedlings or growing in pots.