How and when to plant strawberries with a mustache
Content
Landing dates
When to propagate plants with a mustache is up to you. You can plant strawberries in early spring, as soon as you have the opportunity to do garden work. Still, most gardeners insist on the benefits of autumn planting. Why?
When you transplant strawberries in the fall, next season you will be able to enjoy the berries that will grow on new bushes. Of course, one should not hope that there will be a lot of berries, because the peak yield falls in the second year of fruiting. But still, you will not be left completely without strawberries. If you decide to plant the plants in the spring, then in the summer they will not bear fruit, and to enjoy the taste and aroma of the berries, you will have to wait another whole year.
You need to update the strawberry bed every four years. Already in the third year of fruiting, the yield decreases markedly, and in the fourth year you may be left completely without berries. To prevent this from happening, you can go for a little trick - plant 3 beds of plants, and then you will have to update the beds only once every 3 years. You can also plant strawberries in August, but remember that the autumn planting must be completed before September 15th. Therefore, you should not delay with this case. To transplant strawberries, choose a cloudy day, then there is a high probability that the bushes will take root.
Useful predecessors
When choosing a place for a future strawberry plantation, keep in mind that you need to pay attention to the predecessors. There are crops after which it is strictly forbidden to plant strawberries. Planting berries after eggplants, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers is far from the best idea, because they can transmit their viral diseases to strawberries.
The best predecessors of berries are carrots, various greens, radishes and beets.
Planting technique step by step
When inexperienced gardeners buy several bushes of a good variety of strawberries, they forget that the bush must produce either berries or a mustache. There are no options here. But the scale of expectations of non-craftsmen can only be envied: if there are berries - then a bucket, if seedlings - then for the whole plantation. As a result, strawberries, having spent all their strength on fruiting, gives a weak mustache. As a result, the planted plants give a poor harvest, the berries lose their presentation, the strawberries get sick too often. What to do? Don't chase two birds with one stone.
Therefore, you should start breeding strawberries with a mustache by choosing uterine bushes. To do this, immediately after planting the plants, remove the mustache from all the bushes and wait for the berries to appear. Then it's time to take a closer look at the strawberry bushes. Those who were able to survive all the weather whims well, and also gave very large berries, need to be marked with a sticker, an ordinary stick or a knot. This is not so important, as long as you can then notice these bushes. They will be uterine.
You can even put them on another bed if you want. This is not an extra waste of time and effort, believe me, this way you only simplify your task.And when the mother bushes bloom next season, remove all the buds, because we do not need the plants to bloom and even more so to set the berries. Then the bushes, willy-nilly, will put all their strength not into seeds, but into vegetative reproduction (in a mustache).
Already in June, the plants will give a mustache, on which rosettes will soon be tied. Leave only a particularly large and powerful mustache, do not regret a trifle, cut it off, it will not be useful to us.
If you can, then shorten the strawberry whiskers, leaving only the outlet that is closest to the mother plant. Of course, if you need a large number of seedlings, then you can leave the second sockets. When they take root, then your plan of action may have two options:
- Attach the rosettes to the ground, slightly deepening them into the soil. After that, they need to be watered and looked after, as for ordinary seedlings.
- Don't separate the rosettes from the mother plant, just plant each in a small pot. Soon, the rosettes will be able to develop an independent root system.
Care after
Caring for strawberries requires a lot of work, as well as knowledge. If you decide to plant plants with a mustache, then know that after planting, you must take care of the bushes.
If you choose to plant strawberries in the fall, then the rains will moisten the soil. But in dry weather, you need to water the seedlings every day until they take root. Pour up to a liter of water under one bush. Remember to remove weeds as well as loosen the soil. Strawberries are a big lover of loosening.
Even if the planting is successful, it is not a fact that the plants will give a good harvest next season. After all, they may simply not survive the winter. No one can predict the vagaries of the weather, so it is better to warm the strawberries in advance with sawdust, spruce branches, peat. Straw will also come in handy.
In the next season, some of the bushes can be used for berries, the rest for reproduction. Therefore, do not forget that planting seedlings from the whiskers of the best mother plants is a great way to preserve the variety as well as the yield of the berries.
Video "How to propagate strawberries"
On the recording, Pavel Trannoy tells how to plant a strawberry mustache, while saving precious time without compromising the result.