Feeding strawberries with boric acid, chicken manure

Today, strawberries (garden strawberries) are grown in many summer cottages and household plots. The plant is demanding for top dressing. Only in this case can we hope for a good harvest of healthy and tasty berries. There are many different mineral fertilizers intended for garden strawberries in stores. But modern gardeners strive to obtain environmentally friendly products, so they refuse any chemistry.

Our ancestors also grew strawberries, but the plantings were fed with organic matter. Top dressing of strawberries with ash and other folk remedies is widely used in strawberry beds. How can you fertilize garden strawberries? This is discussed in our article.

It is necessary to know

Before feeding strawberries in the spring, you need to prepare the beds:

• remove shelter, a layer of hay or straw;
• remove old leaves;
• conduct a thorough audit of plantings: remove suspicious strawberry bushes;
• shed the beds with water and loosen the soil.

If such events are not carried out, then no top dressing will provide you with a rich harvest. Plants are fed with various fertilizers. In recent years, gardeners prefer organic or folk remedies to mineral fertilizers. Although one of their mineral fertilizers is urea, it is always in the arsenal of experienced gardeners.

Fertilizers for strawberries

Wood Ash

There is a lot of potassium in the ashes, without which good fruiting of strawberries is impossible. Gardeners around the world, feeding plants not only nourish them, but also improve the structure of the soil. Ash is especially important in the garden if the soil is acidic. You can use dry top dressing, sprinkling strawberries under each bush, followed by watering the beds, or prepare an ash solution.

Ash top dressing does not cause difficulties even for novice gardeners. Let’s find out how to prepare a nutrient composition from the ashes.

One glass of wood ash is poured into a bucket and 1 liter of boiling water is poured. After 24 hours, the mother liquor is ready. To obtain a working solution, add up to 10 liters and water the strawberries during fruiting. 1 liter of working solution is enough for one square.

With this solution, you can perform root and foliar top dressing. It has long been established that through the leaves nutrients are absorbed faster and to a greater extent. Watering or spraying with an ash solution helps to defeat strawberry diseases and scare away pests.

Iodine

Gardeners who have been growing strawberries for more than one year claim that plants need iodine.

What role does the drug play? Everyone knows that this drug is an excellent antiseptic. Feeding strawberries with iodine helps prevent fungal diseases and various types of rot.

Strawberries can be watered with a solution of iodine under the root or fed along the leaves during the awakening of the plants.

There are different options:

1. To prepare a composition for feeding strawberries, pour 10 liters of clean water into a container and add 15 drops of iodine for watering under the root. For a foliar half edge of strawberries, seven drops are enough. Strawberries treated with iodine solution get sick less, grow green mass faster.
2. Some gardeners prepare the following composition for spraying: add 10 liter of milk (not store-bought!) or skim milk to 1 liters of water and pour in 10 drops of iodine. Milk softens the solution and is an additional food for strawberries. Spray with this composition should be three times with an interval of 10 days.
3. During the budding period, a more nutritious top dressing is prepared. A 10-liter bucket of water will require: iodine (30 drops), boric acid (a teaspoon) and wood ash (1 cup). The solution is used immediately after preparation. Half a liter of solution is poured under one plant.

How to feed strawberries in early spring with iodine:

Urea

Strawberries, like other garden crops, need nitrogen. It is present in the soil, but it is difficult for plants to assimilate soil nitrogen. Therefore, in early spring, it is necessary to introduce nitrogen-containing fertilizers into the soil. One option is urea or urea. The composition of the fertilizer contains up to 50% of easily digestible nitrogen.

Feeding strawberries with urea is an important point in growing strawberries:

1. For top dressing in the spring, two tablespoons of the substance are dissolved in a ten-liter container. The resulting composition is enough for 20 plants.
2. During flowering and fruit formation, foliar top dressing with urea is carried out. For a bucket of water – 1 tablespoon.
3. Once again, garden strawberries are fed with urea when preparing plants for wintering. Nitrogen is necessary for plants to strengthen viability and form the next year’s crop. 30 grams of fertilizer is poured into a bucket of water.

About the benefits of urea:

Boric acid

Experienced gardeners do not always use boric acid to feed strawberries, only when the plants lack boron. You can recognize this by twisted and dying leaves.

1. Spring root dressing of strawberries with urea is carried out after the snow melts. One gram of boric acid and potassium permanganate is required per watering can.
2. Foliar top dressing is carried out before the formation of buds, dissolving 10 gram of the substance in 1 liters of water.
3. When the buds begin to form, a multi-solution is prepared, consisting of boric acid (2 g), potassium permanganate (2 g) and a glass of wood ash. Under each bush pour 500 ml of solution.

Chicken droppings

There is a lot of nitrogen in chicken manure, so it can completely replace purchased urea. What is the benefit of this natural fertilizer? First, the fruiting of strawberries is enhanced. Secondly, the fruits become tastier.

Feeding strawberries with chicken manure is done in early spring, until the snow melts. The composition of natural fertilizer is very high in urea. In the cold season, it is simply scattered over the snow.

You can prepare a nutrient solution: you need 1 liter of litter per bucket of water. After three days, the working composition will be ready, they can cultivate the soil to saturate it with nitrogen.

Instead of chicken manure, you can fertilize strawberries with manure. A fresh cake is poured with water, insisted for 3 days. Diluted in a ratio of 1:10, as well as chicken manure.

Folk remedies

In the old days, our grandmothers did not use mineral fertilizers, and iodine and boric acid were not available to them. But there were always weeds. Each housewife always had green infusions in containers, with which they watered their plantings.

What gives such top dressing? This is, in fact, a substitute for manure, because due to fermentation (fermentation), herbs give up their nutrients and trace elements.

The most commonly used are nettles, shepherd’s purse, clover, healthy leaves of tomatoes, potatoes and other plants growing in the garden. The grass is crushed, poured with water and left to ferment for 5-7 days. The readiness of the solution is determined by the appearance of bubbles and an unpleasant odor. If you have dry hay, add it to the container too. Thanks to him, the solution is enriched with a useful hay stick. The container is placed in the sun, kept under a closed lid so that nitrogen does not evaporate. The solution must be stirred.

A liter of mother liquor is poured into a bucket and topped up to 10 liters. Some gardeners enhance the properties of green top dressing with bread, yeast, and ash.

Strawberries are fed with such a solution at the time of budding. Can be watered under the root (1 liter of working solution per plant) or used as a foliar top dressing.

To summarize

Feeding strawberries at different stages of vegetative development is an important part of agricultural technology. We have discussed several options. It is clear that each gardener will choose the most suitable fertilizer for him. Someone will use mineral supplements, and someone will prefer an environmentally friendly strawberry crop. Everything is decided on an individual basis. We wish you healthy plants and a rich harvest of berries.