A juicy snacking favorite, nothing says summer like strawberries. But provide just the right environment for your hydroponic strawberries and you can grow this quintessential hot weather fruit all year long.
Strawberries are an ideal plant to grow hydroponically and can reward you with a generous yield even in a limited amount of space. Here’s everything you need to know to get started!
Why Should You Grow Hydroponic Strawberries?
Why should you grow your strawberries in a hydroponic system? There are plenty of great reasons to choose this method over traditional soil-based gardening, but a few downsides as well.
Overall, strawberries are a great choice to grow hydroponically because of their quick growth and compact size, allowing you to fit a lot of plants in a smaller area and optimize your harvest. But as with any hydroponic crop, there’s a learning curve that might make strawberries a better choice for more experienced gardeners.
The Pros of Growing Hydroponic Strawberries
Strawberries respond well to a hydroponic system. When you grow strawberries this way, you’ll enjoy all the benefits that hydroponics offers as well as some bonus perks specific to strawberries:
- Water efficient: Although hydroponics is often perceived as water intensive, it’s actually very efficient with this vital resource. Rather than supplying your strawberries with a constant supply of fresh water, you repeatedly cycle the same nutrient-rich water through your system.
- Space efficient: Hydroponic grow towers are ideal for strawberries, allowing you to fit a lot more plants into a smaller area. If you’re tight on space, strawberries are a great choice.
- Grow quicker: Because you’ll be feeding your strawberries the exact nutrients they need, they often grow faster than they would in soil.
- Easy to harvest: Harvesting hydroponic strawberries is convenient and clean since you don’t have to crouch or deal with any soil. Many large-scale growers raise their grow beds so that they can easily walk underneath them for harvest.
- No soil-based pests: Because there’s no soil involved in hydroponic gardening, you don’t have to worry about any of the soil-based pests that plague traditional gardens. This is especially helpful to those who want to follow organic gardening practices since you won’t need to worry as much about pest control.
- Fewer flying pests: Hydroponic growing is an overall cleaner method, so will also reduce the number of flying pests you have to compete with for your strawberries.
The Cons of Growing Hydroponic Strawberries
Naturally, there are downsides to growing your strawberries hydroponically. These barriers to entry can make growing strawberries as a first-time hydroponic gardener challenging but can be overcome! More experienced hydroponic gardeners won’t have to worry about some of these issues:
- Setup cost: As with any hydroponic crop, you’ll need to invest in a full hydroponic setup before you can grow anything. This can be a lot more expensive than the starting cost for growing in soil.
- Learning curve: Hydroponics can be complicated. There’s a lot to learn to grow successful hydroponic strawberries, which can deter some beginners or lead to a failed crop. Our guides are here to help you master everything you need to know for success, but if you’re looking for a foolproof crop as you learn hydroponic gardening for the first time, lettuce might be a better choice.
- Smaller yield per plant: Some gardeners find that hydroponic strawberries yield fewer fruits per plant than those grown in soil. However, this is easily offset by how many more plants you can fit into your space and their faster rate of growth, so your overall harvest should be plentiful.
Despite these disadvantages, strawberries are a great choice for your hydroponic garden!
The Best Varieties of Strawberry to Grow Hydroponically
You can grow any variety of strawberry in a hydroponic system, but if you’re looking for quick growth, high yields, and large berries, some varieties will perform better than others.
Strawberries come in three main types:
- Everbearing, which produce two or three main harvests per year. These tend to produce fewer runners because they direct more energy to growing their fruit.
- Day-neutral, which continually produce fruit regardless of the day length, as long as the temperature is warm enough. Day-neutral strawberries tend to be smaller.
- June-bearing, which produce one large crop each year. Most varieties do so in June (hence the name), but there are others that produce earlier or later. These kinds of plants tend to produce the largest strawberries.
To make the most of your hydroponic setup, you’ll likely want to choose an everbearing or day-neutral strain so you can grow year-round. After all, one of the main benefits of hydroponic gardening is the ability to completely control the growing environment, always giving your plants peak conditions so you get continuous growth.
Some of the best varieties of strawberry to choose for hydroponic growing are:
- Douglas
- Tioga
- Tuft
- Chandler
- Brighton
- Red Gauntlet
How to Grow Hydroponic Strawberries
Growing hydroponic strawberries depends on giving your plants the ideal conditions in which to grow and thrive. Strawberries are naturally warm-season crops, so they enjoy plenty of light, warmth, and nutrients to produce their flowers and fruit. You will also need to consider how your plants will be pollinated.
Hydroponic System
You can grow strawberries using any hydroponic method, but the ebb and flow system is ideal for their needs. In an ebb and flow system, you continually flood the plant roots with the nutrient solution, then drain it to provide the plants with access to air. This ensures that the strawberry roots stay well hydrated and well oxygenated.
Another good system for growing strawberries is the hydroponic drip system, which feeds the plants through drippers that sit in their growing medium. This ensures that each plant gets precisely the nutrients it needs to grow well.
Planting Technique
When grown from seed, strawberries take years to mature enough to bear fruit. That’s why most gardeners choose to buy them as seedlings or young plants instead. This will allow you to enjoy fresh strawberries in your first season.
Light
Strawberries naturally grow in summer, when they enjoy long days with plenty of light. Your strawberries will need between 10 and 12 hours of light each day throughout their lifecycle. There’s no need to vary the amount of light as they grow.
Temperature
Strawberries are a warm-season crop and enjoy a toasty environment, so you’ll see the best growth if you keep their climate between 65 and 80 °F (18 and 27 °C).
pH
As with any hydroponic crop, the right pH is fundamental to your strawberries’ success. Keep the water between a pH of 5.8 and 6.2 for the best results. If the pH falls outside of this range, your strawberries will have a hard time accessing the nutrients they need to grow strong and healthy.
Growing Medium
There are plenty of growing mediums to choose from for your hydroponic strawberries, and most will work well. Coco coir is a great choice because it is inert, readily available, and made sustainably from what would otherwise be a waste product.
Nutrients
Like many fruiting plants, strawberries are heavy feeders. They need a good supply of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus to yield plenty of berries. They also need access to micronutrients to prevent deficiencies.
The easiest way to give your plants everything they need is to choose a liquid nutrient solution designed for fruit and follow the instructions on the bottle.
Pollination
If you’re growing in a grow tent, greenhouse, or indoors, bees won’t have access to your strawberry plants to pollinate them.
To overcome this issue, one option is to pollinate them by hand. This can be very time consuming if you have a large hydroponic setup but is normally cheap and easy. Strawberries are hermaphroditic, meaning that you don’t have to worry about matching male and female flowers.
To hand pollinate your strawberries, you will need a clean cotton swab:
- Gently collect some pollen from a strawberry flower using your cotton swab.
- Transfer the pollen to another flower by wiping the cotton swab on the center of the flower.
- Repeat for as many flowers as you can see.
If hand pollination is too time consuming for you, you will need to provide pollinating insects with a way to access your strawberries.
Pruning
Strawberries produce runners called stolons, which are leafless stems that extend from the main plant. When you see a stolon, prune it off by cutting close to the base of the plant. This will direct all the plant’s energy into producing flowers and fruit rather than spreading out, keeping your plants healthy and your yields high.
If the stolon has a new plant forming at its tip, you can use it to propagate a new strawberry plant.
You can also prune off any dead leaves to prevent them from falling and clogging up your system.
Propagation (aka Cloning)
The best way to propagate or clone strawberries is by using the stolons you clipped off while pruning. After cutting the stolon off at the base of the plant, secure it in a growing medium or soil. Provide your cutting with plenty of moisture, warmth, and light.
Once your cutting has developed roots, you can trim off the extended runner stem to encourage a more compact growth pattern.
When your seedling has roots at least two inches long, you can transplant it into your hydroponic system!
Common Issues When Growing Hydroponic Strawberries
Solutions to some of the most common problems people face when growing hydroponic strawberries.
Pests
Growing without soil eliminates a lot of the pests that traditional gardeners commonly encounter, but there’s still a chance that some unwanted visitors will sneak in. Strawberries can attract:
- Spider mites, which appear as small yellowish-brown spots on the leaves. They can damage and kill your strawberry plants. If you notice spider mites, you can try blasting them off with a pressure nozzle or spraying them with neem oil.
- Thrips, which are minute flying insects that both damage plants and transmit diseases. Sticky traps can be an effective way to get rid of them.
- Gnats, typically fungus gnats, which are also small flying insects and are attracted by overly moist growing media. Sticky traps are a good way to get rid of gnats, but it will take some time because of their rapid lifecycles.
Diseases
One of the benefits of growing your strawberries in a hydroponic system is that you don’t have to worry about root rot and other soil-borne fungi and disease. There are, however, a few diseases that can still bother your hydroponic strawberries:
- Rhizopus rot is a fungus that appears as water-soaked spots on the strawberries. These spots grow rapidly and leave your fruit limp and brown. Unfortunately, Rhizopus rot thrives in the same warm environment you’ll create for your strawberries. The best way to protect against it is to pick your strawberries as soon as they are ripe.
- Mucor fruit rot is another fungus that enjoys high humidity. Fruit suffering from Mucor rot will become covered in tough, wiry mycelium with black tips. The best way to protect your crop against this disease is also to pick the strawberries as soon as they are ripe.
- Botrytis cinerea or grey mold is a widespread fungal disease that can infect over 200 different plant species, including strawberries. It appears as a fluffy grey coat on the strawberry fruit and flowers. You can treat grey mold with neem oil if you catch it in the early stages, but once it takes off it might require a copper-based fungicide to eradicate.
- Powdery mildew is a spore-based disease that many gardeners struggle with when the environment is too humid. It looks like a light grey or white powder on the leaves of the plant. To prevent powdery mildew, ensure that your plants have plenty of space between them to encourage airflow. If you find powdery mildew on your strawberries, you should prune off the affected area and spray your plants with a solution of baking soda and liquid soap.
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