Shopping online used to be considered a novelty, but with high gas prices and suburban congestion becoming more of a problem, e-commerce has gone main stream. If you’ve been thinking about growing strawberries in containers and wondering how to buy a strawberry planter online, you’ll be relieved to discover that both are painless and fun.

Strawberries need rich soil, good drainage, and at least four to six hours of direct afternoon sunlight every day to thrive. Strawberry pots come in several varieties. The most common strawberry planter is a plain (or glazed) terra cotta strawberry ‘jar’ with pockets on the sides, each pocket designed to hold a single plant.

Strawberries can also be successfully grown in shallow window boxes if excellent drainage is provided or in hanging vinyl planters that you fill with soil (or that come prefilled) and then poke holes in which to place the individual plants.

The advantage to traditional terra cotta strawberry jars is you can grow lots of berries in a small space. (Long, flat planters work fine but take up more room.) If you take a length of PVC pipe as tall as the strawberry jar and poke holes in the sides of it, you can bury the pipe in the center of the jar before you fill it with soil and plants. That way, all you have to do when it’s time to water is pour your water directly into the PVC pipe.

When choosing a strawberry planter online, look for a retailer with a secure online payment system that allows you to pay for your purchase with a VISA or Master Card, and choose a site with a 100% guarantee policy so that if the planter arrives damaged or is not what you thought it would be you can still return it.

When paying for purchases online, it’s also best to use a credit card rather than a debit card. The reason for this is that it is easier to cancel out a credit card payment than a debit card payment should problems arise. (Debit cards take money instantly out of your checking account instead of adding a charge to your monthly bill, so reversing a debit purchase can be more difficult depending on the policies of your specific financial institution.)

Another consideration is shipping. Some online merchants offer free or low-cost shipping, others don’t. When comparing prices, make sure you take the shipping costs (if any) into account. One of the best features of shopping online is the competitive pricing. You might spend an entire afternoon driving around town comparing prices on strawberry planters if you purchased on the traditional way, but when you shop online, you can go to any one of dozens of comparative pricing web sites and instantly find the lowest price available for any specific item.

Some garden supply web sites and nurseries will sell you not only your strawberry planter, but also the strawberries, soil, fertilizer, and anything else you might need to get started. You can even make your selections in advance of the growing season and just have everything delivered right to your front door at the appropriate time. This saves you the hassle of getting to a garden center before all the good plants are gone, and from having to stand online with everyone else in town out buying spring plant material and soil.

Online garden retailers offer lots of free advice on their web sites that may or may not be available at no charge when you shop in person. Without spending a dime you can learn a lot about growing strawberries in containers just by visiting a wide variety of suppliers on the internet. You can also order garden catalogs to be mailed to your home in the future to remind you that it is time to shop for plants and pots again.

When shopping for a strawberry planter online for the first time, start slow. Try a single pot or hanging planter and buy just enough strawberries to fill it up. You will need only one plant per pocket, and you will need to replace the plants after about three years. Although strawberry plants are technically perennials, in practice they lose vigor over time.

Choose June or ever-bearing plants and pass up the tiny Alpine strawberries (sometimes called fraises du bois), since it is very difficult to harvest enough Alpine berries to eat from a strawberry jar or even several jars.

If you choose ever-bearing plants, pinch off about half of the blooms the first spring. This will give you a strong fall crop and a good spring and fall crop every year thereafter. Always pinch off extra ’suckers’ and runners the strawberries in the pockets send out, since these will keep the plant from sending its energy to strong berry production.

Shopping online can be fun, convenient, and economical, and when it comes to shopping from strawberry containers and strawberry plants, it’s also a good way to learn about how to grow these delicious seasonal fruits.

Give it a try, and whatever you do, have fun with it. It’s not as hard as you think, and once you’ve had a little success, you’re likely to become quite addicted to online gardening. Lots of folks already are!

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