If you’ve ever been in any garden store during the spring time, you’ve probably seen one of the many kits for growing strawberries in hanging baskets. While the kits are usually inexpensive, many people struggle with them, because growing from seed is pretty difficult for many people because there are a few strawberry germination tricks you need.

After looking at the many different kits available, the one that seems the most promising is this Strawberry Garden Hanging Basket Kit as it actually comes with plants, not just a few seeds that may or may not grow and will take awhile for you to ever see results. The plants are kept dormant in cold temperatures before being shipped to your door, which means after you plant them and follow the basic care directions for strawberries you’ll have some great looking plants of your own that are ready to bear fruit.

But let’s say you don’t want to use a kit and are ready to grow them from hanging baskets all on your own – well, that’s not really any more difficult either once you know the best way to grow strawberries from a hanging basket.

First things first: you need hanging baskets and a good place to hang them. This may seem obvious, but picking the right container, as well as the right place to hang them, will save you a lot of time and frustration later. If you plan on growing them indoors, see our tips on Growing Strawberries Indoors – if you are planning to grow them outside, then you’ll want to make sure that you choose the sunniest place you can find. Strawberries need at least 6 hours of sunlight each day to grow their best, so the sunnier, the better. Some people will hang them from their porch or deck, others will consider picking up some inexpensive Shepherd’s Hooks to use for hanging the baskets. Some people may also instead opt to install a long bar (such as a shower curtain bar) across an area and then hang the baskets on that.

For growing strawberries in baskets, any basket will work, but you’ll want to make sure that you don’t overcrowd it with too many plants. Strawberry plants have very shallow root systems, so your planter does not need to be very deep. Overcrowding will cause the plants however to be more prone to disease, stress, and other issues, so make sure in any planter that you place them at least 6-8 inches apart from each other.

Because you don’t want hanging baskets to get too heavy, and you also want to make sure that the dirt is a sandy soil mix, something that can work well is mixing peat moss with potting soil and a bit of top soil or sand. You’ll also want to make sure that your soil has a pH between 5.6 and 6.3, as this is the favored pH of strawberry plants.

When you plant your plants, it may already have a few blossoms or start growing tendrils (this is how they reproduce to make new plants) – and while it may be very difficult for you to make yourself do this, you’re going to want to do pinch off all the flowers and pick any berries visible when planting. This will help the plant concentrate and focus on building only strong roots, and the yield of blossoms and fruit will be much higher later if you have the patience to do this.

Another important thing to consider is that hanging baskets tend to dry out very quickly, and so proper watering is essential to keeping the plants happy. There is no set number of times or a clear answer to how often to water strawberry plants, but instead you should make sure that your soil is always moist.

Keep in mind if you live in a warm climate that strawberries prefer a temperature around 65 degrees, so you may want to take care to protect them on very hot days and watching that they are well watered. If the temperature will be very hot, you may want to make sure they just get the morning sun between 7 am and 11 am and then move into the shade.

While growing strawberries from hanging baskets may not yield a huge crop, they are very pretty plants and certainly will make you smile when you see the berries growing!