- 24 minutes ago
The biggest winterizing mistake strawberry growers make is covering their plants too soon. Learn why strawberries need a proper cold dormancy, and when to mulch so your bed can survive winter and return healthy for next season’s harvest.
This practical strawberry gardening guide explains how to time protection after three hard frosts, choose loose straw or dry leaves, and avoid mulch that traps moisture. You’ll also hear how to trim foliage without damaging next year’s crowns, protect potted strawberries in harsh weather, and gradually remove mulch in spring. Whether you grow strawberries in garden beds, raised beds, or containers, these seasonal care tips can help safeguard your plants and encourage a stronger crop.
This practical strawberry gardening guide explains how to time protection after three hard frosts, choose loose straw or dry leaves, and avoid mulch that traps moisture. You’ll also hear how to trim foliage without damaging next year’s crowns, protect potted strawberries in harsh weather, and gradually remove mulch in spring. Whether you grow strawberries in garden beds, raised beds, or containers, these seasonal care tips can help safeguard your plants and encourage a stronger crop.
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00:00There is one thing you can do to your strawberry bed this fall that will ruin next year's whole
00:05crop, and the sorrowful part is that folk do it out of pure kindness, trying to protect the plants.
00:12They tuck them in too soon. They see the first cold snap, they rush out with a thick blanket of
00:19mulch, and they bury the bed warm and snug, thinking they have done it a great favor.
00:25And they have killed next summer's berries, or near enough. Today I am going to show you how to
00:32carry your strawberries safe through the hardest winter so they come back strong and bear you a
00:38bigger crop than ever, and the very first thing you must learn is when not to touch them. Stay with
00:45me,
00:45for getting this one bit of timing wrong undoes everything else. Now let me set your mind at
00:52ease on the main thing, for folk worry needlessly. The strawberry is a tough old perennial, far
00:59tougher than it looks, and it does not merely survive the winter, it needs the winter. A
01:06strawberry plant must go cold and dormant through the dark months, must have its proper rest, or it
01:13will not set a good crop of berries the following year. So the cold is not your enemy here. The
01:19cold
01:20is necessary. Your whole job in winterizing a strawberry bed is not to keep the plants warm,
01:27for that would be the ruin of them. Your job is only to see that they pass through their cold
01:33sleep
01:33smoothly, without being jolted awake at the wrong time. Understand that, and the rest is simple.
01:40I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you
01:48want it,
01:49it is there. I will not mention it again. So let us begin with the mistake I opened on,
01:56for it is the one that matters most, and it is all about timing. The great error, the one that
02:02costs
02:03folk their crop, is mulching the bed too early. Here is why it is so deadly. A strawberry settles
02:11into its winter sleep in answer to two things, the shortening days and the deepening cold. If you
02:18leave it be, it dozes off gentle and natural as the fall comes on, and it stays dozing even when
02:25a warm
02:26spell comes through, for the short days tell it true that winter is near. But if you rush out and
02:33bury it deep in mulch too soon, you force it into the dark before its time, and then if a
02:39warm week
02:40comes, as it so often does in the fall, the plant is fooled. It thinks spring has come early. It
02:47wakes,
02:48it pushes out tender new growth, and then true winter comes roaring back the next week and kills that
02:55tender growth stone dead, and often the plant with it. You meant to protect it, and instead you tricked
03:02it to its death. So here is the plain rule, and it is the heart of this whole video. You
03:09do not mulch
03:10at the first cold. You wait. You wait until your strawberries have taken a good three hard frosts in a
03:17row, three nights the cold truly bit, and you look at the long-range forecast and see no warm spell
03:25coming for a couple of weeks. When you have those two things together, three hard frosts behind you
03:32and no thaw ahead, then and only then do you know the plants are truly down for their winter sleep
03:39and safe to cover. Do not fret over the plants taking those first few hard frosts bare. They can take
03:47it,
03:47easily. It is far better they feel the cold and go properly to sleep than that you tuck them in
03:54warm
03:55too soon. Timing is the whole of it. Late is far safer than early. Now, how do you know what
04:02a
04:03strawberry wants under that mulch? You think on where the strawberry grows wild, for that tells you
04:09everything. It is a low, creeping plant of the forest floor, a thing that grows down among the leaf litter
04:16at
04:16the feet of the trees. And come fall, out in the wild woods, what happens to it? The trees drop
04:24their
04:24leaves and bury it under a deep loose blanket, and then the snow comes and lays a second blanket over
04:31that, and there the little plant sleeps the winter through, wrapped warm in leaves and snow. That is all a
04:39mulch is. You are only doing by hand what the forest does for its own, laying the fallen leaf blanket
04:46over
04:47your strawberries that the woods would lay if they grew there wild. So once the time is right, you cover
04:54them. Clean straw is the classic, or loose dry leaves, which is the very thing nature itself uses. How thick
05:03depends on how hard your winter bites. In a mild country, two or three inches is plenty, just a light
05:10cover against a surprise cold snap. But in a hard winter country, you go thick, and you go thicker
05:17than you think. The old commercial growers would pile the straw a foot deep or more over their strawberry
05:24fields, truly burying them, for a deep loose blanket is what holds the killing cold off the crowns.
05:32Sow two or three inches at the least in a mild place, a good foot or more where the winter
05:39is fierce.
05:40Use a loose, airy mulch mind, clean straw or dry fluffy leaves, something the air can still move through
05:48a little. What you do not want is a mat of wet matted grass clippings or whole soggy leaves pressed
05:57into a
05:57slimy blanket, for that smothers the crowns and rots them. Loose and dry and airy is the rule, a blanket
06:06that breathes. And do not fret about putting on too much, for it is an easy thing to rake the
06:13excess off
06:14come spring. Too much mulch is a small bother. Too little is a dead plant. Now there is one old
06:23question
06:23that folk fret over, and that is whether to cut off all the dead brown foliage before you mulch. I
06:31will
06:31tell you the honest truth of it, which is that it is mostly up to you and does little harm
06:37either way.
06:38The old timers used to say you must clean off every dead leaf or it would rot and kill the
06:45plant. But
06:46that is not so. That spent foliage, left in place, does the mother plant no harm at all, and in
06:54truth
06:54it adds a little extra mulch of its own. So if you wish to leave it, leave it, and nothing
07:01bad will come
07:01of it. That said, there are two good reasons a careful gardener might cut it back anyway. The first is
07:09weeds. All that dead foliage hides the weeds that have crept in among your strawberries, and it is far
07:17easier to clear those weeds out now, in the fall, than to fight them in the spring when you have
07:23a
07:23hundred other things pressing. So cutting back lets you get at the weeds. The second reason is that the
07:31old foliage sometimes stands up tall and proud and simply gets in the way of laying a proper mulch blanket.
07:39And trimming it down lets the straw settle in close where it belongs. But if you do decide to cut
07:47it
07:47back, you must be careful, and this is a thing folk get wrong and wound their plants. Here is the
07:54trouble.
07:55Even as the old leaves die, the plant has already formed next year's new buds, the little crowns that
08:03will become next summer's berries. And they sit right there at the base, just at the soil surface, tucked in
08:11among the dead stuff. So when you go hacking away the dead foliage in a hurry, it is the easiest
08:18thing in
08:18the world to tear or slice right through one of those tender new crowns and never know you did it.
08:26And
08:26that is a berry cluster lost. So if you cut back, cut back slow and careful, with a good sharp
08:35blade,
08:35taking the dead and sparing the living crown at the base. Take your time and you will do no harm.
08:43Rush it and you cut away next year's fruit.
08:47And one more honest word on the foliage, for the old rule has gone stale. It used to be said
08:54to wait
08:55until all the leaves had died back brown on their own before winterizing. But the modern kinds,
09:02the ever-bearing sorts that keep throwing berries late into the fall, will often still be green and
09:09even still fruiting when the cold comes. And they will not die back on their own on any schedule you
09:17can count on. So do not wait for the leaves to brown. Go by the frosts, as I told you,
09:24three hard ones
09:25with no thaw coming. That is your signal, not the color of the leaves. Now the hardest part. And here
09:34I must be square with you, for honesty serves you better than a false promise. And that is,
09:40the strawberries grown in pots and containers. A strawberry in the open ground has the whole
09:46earth around it to hold off the cold. But a strawberry in a pot sits up in the air with
09:52the cold
09:52able to get at its roots from every side, top, and bottom, and all around. In a mild country,
09:59this is no great matter. But in a hard winter country, I will tell you plainly, overwintering
10:05strawberries in pots is a chancy business. And in a truly bitter year, you may lose some no matter
10:12what you do. I would not have you think a trick or two makes a potted strawberry as safe as
10:18one in the
10:18ground, for it does not. But there are two things that greatly help. The first is to bunch all your
10:25pots together tight in one close group, crowded up against one another, for crowded so they shelter
10:31each other and act almost like one big bed. And only the few on the outside take the full brunt
10:39of the
10:39cold. The second is to shove that huddle of pots up snug against a wall or a fence or the
10:46side of a
10:46building, so that one whole side is sheltered and the mass of the wall holds a little warmth.
10:53Bunch them and back them against a wall. Mulch them over the top as well, and you give them their
10:59best
10:59chance. But know the limit of it. In the cold country, a potted strawberry is always the gamble,
11:07and some winters take their toll. And a word on the far end of it, the spring, for the winterizing
11:14is only half the tail. Come spring, as the hard frosts give way and you see new greens stirring
11:21down under the straw, you rake back the heavy mulch to let the sun and air get at the waking
11:27plants.
11:28But do not clear it all away at once, and do not clear it too soon. A late spring frost
11:35can still nip
11:36the tender new growth, so pull the blanket back gradual as the warm settles in, and keep a little
11:43handy to toss back over on a night that threatens. That straw you raked off need not be wasted either,
11:50for tucked along the rows it keeps the ripening berries up off the mud and the slugs come summer,
11:57which is how the strawberry got its very name, the straw laid under the berry.
12:01My grandmother grew strawberries in a long bed at the sunny side of the garden, and I remember her
12:08raking the fallen leaves over them every fall, but never in a hurry, always late, after the hard
12:15frosts had come. I asked her once, a boy impatient to help, why she did not cover them sooner when
12:23the
12:23first cold came, and her plants not yet tucked in while the neighbors were. She said,
12:29you do not put a child to bed at noon just because the day turned gray, and you do not
12:35put a strawberry
12:36to bed before its proper night either, or it will be up again at the worst time, wanting its breakfast
12:43in the dark. Let it get good and tired first, she said, and it will sleep the whole winter through.
12:50I did not grasp her meaning as a boy. I grasp it now. It is the whole secret of the
12:57thing,
12:58said in a way a child could remember. So let me say plainly, who gains by you believing a strawberry
13:05bed is a fussy, delicate thing that wants fretting over? The folk who sell you new strawberry plants
13:12every spring gain, for a body who loses his bed to a winter mistake comes back and buys fresh roots
13:19come spring, year on year. But a strawberry bed set to sleep right is a perennial, a thing that
13:27comes back on its own and bears bigger every year for near a decade, costing you nothing after the first
13:34planting. It is not that anyone schemed it so. It is only that fresh plants sold every spring are good
13:42business. And a bed that lasts ten years on its own is not. So the plants get sold, and the
13:49simple old
13:49knowing of how to carry a bed through the winter gets let slip. Now tell me this in the comments.
13:56Do you
13:56grow your strawberries in the ground or in pots? And have you ever lost a bed to the winter before?
14:02For I will
14:03wager if you did, it was tucked in too early. And tell me as well how hard your winters run
14:09on the
14:09worst nights, for that decides how thick your blanket of straw must be, and whether your potted
14:15berries can be saved at all. Next time I will show you how to take the runners your strawberry bed
14:21throws
14:21off in the summer and root them into a whole new bed for free, so you need never buy another
14:27strawberry
14:27plant as long as you live. But for now, keep your hands off that bed until the hard frosts have
14:34come
14:34and the plants are truly asleep, and then tuck them in deep. The people who built this country with their
14:41hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.