Garden Tips: Choosing which strawberries to grow

Let’s talk about picking strawberries, not harvesting those delicious red berries, but selecting which varieties to grow.

There are three main types of strawberry varieties, or more correctly, cultivars or cultivated varieties. There are June-bearing, everbearing and day-neutral cultivars.

June-bearers form flower buds in the fall and produce one main crop of berries in spring or early summer, depending on the cultivar. Everbearers form flower buds in the fall and again in summer, and produce one crop in late summer or early fall, or spring and early summer. Day-neutral strawberries form flower buds all through the growing season, producing a continuous crop of berries with production slowing during the heat of summer.

June-bearers tend to have the largest berries and produce the most fruit over a short period of time. This makes them a good choice for gardeners who want to preserve them by freezing or for making jam. Day-neutrals generally produce smaller berries with great flavor over a longer period, making them a good option for fresh eating.

Another consideration in selecting strawberry cultivars is winter hardiness. The plants need to be able to withstand the cold in the region they are grown. Some cultivars are popular in other parts of the country or even other regions in Washington, but may not perform well here. Look for hardy cultivars recommended for growing in the inland Northwest. Here are a few:

▪ For June-bearing berries, there are a number of choices. Benton and Hood are longtime favorites. Hood produces large fruit early in the season and is good for fresh eating or making jam, but does not stand up well to freezing. Benton produces medium-sized berries in late mid-season. They are good fresh and fair as frozen berries. Two other recommended June-bearers are Rainier and Shuksan. They are judged to have the best flavor for fresh eating and are good to excellent for freezing, although Rainier’s berries turn dark rapidly in hot weather.

▪  Popular everbearers recommended for eastern Washington are Quinault, Ogallala and Fort Laramie. None of these have great size, and the fruit is not as firm as other types.

▪ Day-neutral strawberries are my favorite. Tribute, Tristar, Albion and Seascape are recommended for our region. Tribute and Tristar have been around a long time and are dependable. They only have medium-sized berries but excellent flavor makes up for this. Seascape, a California strawberry, has larger berries with good flavor, but the plants are susceptible to verticillium wilt. This disease can be a problem in local gardens and will shorten the life of a planting. Fern, another day-neutral, is also susceptible to verticillium wilt and has not been tested for production in Washington.

If you want to grow strawberries, now is a good time to start planning what to plant. Check with your local nursery to see what cultivars they plan to offer. Buy dormant, certified virus-free plants for planting in early spring. For more information about growing strawberries, go to Berries for the Inland Northwest at http://

bit.ly/strawberry_inland and Growing Strawberries in the Inland Northwest & Intermountain West at http://

bit.ly/1XmiFTb. They provide information on site selection, planting and care of strawberries.

This story was originally published February 14, 2016 at 9:27 AM with the headline "Garden Tips: Choosing which strawberries to grow."