Strawberry Plant Growth Stages


Understanding the life cycle of strawberries will help you be a better gardener. What are its growth stages?
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Growing strawberries will add more color and liveliness to your backyard garden. If you’re a gardener, you may be wondering how quickly strawberry plants develop. 

Despite the strawberry plant’s appearance, its lifecycle is quite complex. Understanding how it grows will help you properly maintain it and maximize the plant’s growth and the strawberries it produces.

Germination

Strawberry seeds are more challenging to germinate than other garden plants because they need light to germinate and become dormant before they can grow. For successful germination, condition or stratify seeds for 2 – 3 weeks by storing them at 10 – 30 degrees.

Planting bare-root strawberries, strawberry seedlings, or runners are other ways to start growing strawberry plants. Runners, also known as stolons or daughter plants, sprout as the berries mature.

germinating strawberries in a home garden

Vegetative Growth

Strawberry plants will grow quickly as the root system develops. They also develop daughter plants called runners as they grow. This is particularly true for strawberry plants planted in June. The plant will use its energy to produce its first fruit before producing runners.

When planted, it takes around 110 days for strawberries to go from germination to flowering. New leaves will begin to appear on bare root strawberries 2 – 3 weeks after they’re planted, and the plant may start blooming 3 – 4 weeks later.

The length of the vegetative stage depends on the type of strawberry plant and the environment in which it’s planted. The vegetative stage typically lasts approximately 6 months, but it could last up to a year in warmer climates. 

Strawberry plants go dormant during the cooler winter months but resume active vegetative growth in the spring.

leaves of a young strawberry plant

Flowering

A strawberry plant typically starts blooming 2 – 4 weeks after its new leaves develop. It produces flowers, or inflorescences, that typically have five sepals and five white petals. These inflorescences grow from terminal buds on the plant’s crown. 

There may even be one or two extra flower clusters on each branch, which are miniature crowns that branch out from the main crown. 

Inadequate light, cold temperatures, and a lack of water can negatively impact the size and health of the blooms and, subsequently, the strawberries.

white and yellow strawberry flowers

Pollination

Flowers create nectar at the base of their stamens. The blooms that form on strawberry plants can pollinate themselves, or they may rely on cross-pollination with pollen from an adjacent plant. Cross-pollination is achieved with the help of insects, wind, and people.

Your garden should attract these pollinators. The more pollinators you have in your garden, the better.

Fruiting

A strawberry plant’s lifecycle normally takes 60 – 90 days from planting to harvest. Environmental variables like soil temperature and the amount of sunshine the plant receives can impact how quickly they develop. 

small, ripe and red strawberry fruit
Alaine Connolly
Alaine has been working way too hard in horticulture since 1992, beautifying golf courses, resorts, and hotels. She is a part time landscape designer who works full time caring for a 28,000 square foot public garden. At home, she maintains her own 400 square feet plot. Alaine lives in northern Illinois - zone 5b.
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