RE: Little Learning Hands - Planting Bare Root Strawberries 🍓 - My Garden Journal

In answer to your sugar water question, this is a mini on plant biology:

When a plant reaches a certain stage in it's growth, and is pretty healthy, it will start exuding sap out the roots. This sap feeds the biology in the soil. In the feeding process the biology takes up minerals in the soil. Often these minerals are not bio-available to plant roots. The biology chelates the minerals and when it dies, it releases the chelated minerals and the roots can take them up. That's why it's so important to NOT kill the biology by tilling the soil below 2" - 3" deep.

In the spring, before the soil warms above 60F, one can add sugar or dried molasses to the amendment mix to provide food for the biology before the plants reach the stage when they exude sap. Doing so later or repeatedly might cause more problems than it solves.

So that's how the system works, and so, yes and no, to your question. It's best to have the minerals the plant needs by doing a comprehensive soil test and adding exactly what that soil needs, rather than saying oh, perhaps lime, or wood ash, etc. If what the soil needs is in balance, the biology alive, you will get really sweet and flavorful strawberries, or any other vegetable or fruit.