Contents
Some gardeners consider strawberries to be a finicky plant that requires special care, while others claim that the culture is able to grow in any conditions. Be that as it may, a lot of effort will have to be made to obtain a generous harvest. Planting bushes begins in August and ends in September. By this time, seats should already be prepared. At home, you can use different beds for strawberries, but the future harvest will depend on how they are equipped.
Where is the best place to plant a garden
Strawberries and strawberries are best grown in a well-lit area. The plant loves light and warmth, but if such a place is located in a lowland, it is undesirable to break a bed here. The fact is that the soil in low areas can freeze even in late spring, which threatens the plant with death.
The location of the beds for planting strawberries even affects the taste of the berries. Despite the fact that the culture loves the light, it can also be planted in a shaded area. Ripe berries will pick up little sugar, but will acquire more flavor. Such a harvest is ideal for jam preservation, drying harvesting and other processing. If strawberries are grown only for fresh consumption, then they are planted in the sun. Berries ripen less fragrant, but with a large accumulation of sugar.
You can not break strawberry beds in the place where the representatives of this family grew last year. Plants pull the same nutrients from the soil in addition to having common pests. Most of them hibernate in the soil, and with the onset of spring they wake up and begin to destroy the new crop. Fruit trees have a bad effect on strawberries: apple trees, cherries, apricots, plums, etc. It is undesirable for wild rose and bird cherry to bloom nearby. If last years raspberries, blackberries, strawberries or roses grew on the site, planting strawberries in this place should be abandoned.
Rules for preparing a seat
Most often, strawberries are planted simply in the garden or in the garden, without creating vertical beds and other complex structures. This method is also effective if one simple rule was followed when preparing the site:
- All debris is removed from the area allocated for planting strawberries. In the garden, this can be foliage and small branches.
- Even if the garden has been plowed since autumn, the site is once again dug up with a shovel to the depth of the bayonet.
- Top dressing of the soil is done with humus. Fertilizer is scattered at the rate of 1 bucket per 1 m2 beds
After preparing the soil in the garden, markings are made in the form of strips for planting strawberries.
When making a bed for strawberries, one must not forget about the furrows separating it. Excess rainwater will accumulate in these recesses. Strawberries love watering, but it does not apply to moisture-loving plants. From an excess of moisture around the root system, rot is formed with a large number of parasites. Furrows will drain excess water away from the roots. The strawberry grooves themselves should not be dug deep. The plant will grow more slowly, which will affect the yield.
The finished bed with strawberries should turn out on a raised platform. Intermediate furrows ideally deepen by 25 cm. This is enough for good water drainage. During the harvest, a person walks along these furrows. The integrity of the hole with the plant is preserved, but the groove itself must not be broken, otherwise the water drainage will be disturbed.
Optimal sizes of strawberry beds and planting rules
So, it’s time to learn how to properly break a strawberry patch. To achieve good yields, we adhere to the following rules:
- The holes made for strawberry bushes should be at a distance of about 40 cm from each other. Such parameters will provide free space for good plant development.
- The width of the strip where strawberries will grow is kept within 20 cm. A furrow 30 cm wide is cut between each strip. As a result, one bed 50 cm wide is obtained, consisting of a strip and a furrow.
- The location of the lanes on the site is done in the direction from east to west. With this planting, strawberries receive uniform sunlight.
After they have broken a bed for strawberries, they begin planting plants. This must be done carefully so as not to damage the root system. After planting all the bushes, the plants are watered with room water under the root. Foliage is desirable not to wet.
Even in order to save space, the strawberry bed should not be thickened with plants. The close location of the bushes will lead to their slow development. Worse, if one of the plants gets sick. With a close landing, the disease will instantly spread to all plantings. In addition, we must remember that strawberries in the spring let out long whiskers that can intertwine with each other. Overgrown furrows make it difficult to weed. Mustaches can be accidentally chopped off with a chopper, and even hooked on the main bush.
It must be expected that any beds for strawberries serve no more than four years. After that, the bushes are transplanted to another place. During this time, the plants suck out all the useful substances from the soil, and with further cultivation of strawberries, the yield will decrease, and the berries will become very small.
Low strawberry bed according to German technology
Above, we examined the simplest option for arranging a strawberry garden in a garden or garden. The method is considered simple, and accessible to novice gardeners. However, the simplest beds do not allow you to get the maximum yield of strawberries that plants can bring. Now we will consider what other technologies for growing strawberries exist, and we will start with the German garden.
This system provides for the manufacture of boxes. Boards made of boards or any other material are the separators of the strips with strawberries in the garden, and are installed instead of a furrow. That is, you need to make a bed with a width of 40 to 80 cm, consisting of one strip of strawberries, and enclose it with sides. If the bed is made with a width of 80 cm and a little more, then strawberries can be planted in two rows.
When making a low strawberry bed using German technology, the following steps are performed:
- On the site, markings are made according to the size of the box. This place is cleared of debris and weeds.
- The box is pushed aside. At this place, a turf layer with a depth of about 40 cm is removed. A fence is installed in the resulting recess. The bottom of the pit is covered with any organic waste that can rot. You can use small tree branches, newspapers, corn stalks, etc.
- From above, organic matter is covered with a layer of fertile soil, after which the surface of the bed is leveled. Strawberries are planted in rows, the number of which depends on the width of the fence. In narrow boxes make one row. If the width of the fence allows you to make several rows, then a furrow 50 cm wide is made between them. After planting all the strawberry bushes, brick or tile paths are laid out in these areas.
The presence of fences on strawberry plantations has a positive effect not only on the amount of the crop, but also on plant maintenance. The gardener gets free access to each bush. This facilitates watering, weeding, fertilizing and other plant care procedures. Fences do not allow the soil to erode during rain, and creeping weeds to penetrate the strawberry bed. If the plants in one fence are sick, the disease will not be able to hit neighboring plantings. The strawberry patch board solves the mustache tangle problem. They do not intertwine with each other, as happens in a regular garden.
Despite the presence of fences, it is still necessary to water the low beds for strawberries using a special technology. When using a garden watering can, watering is carried out in a circular motion, preventing the soil from being washed away near the bush until the roots appear. You can do this process with a hose. In this case, a rag is wound around its end, which can pass water well. Watering is carried out under the root of the plant.
Careless watering of the beds from a hose with a diffuser will lead to erosion of the soil under the very bushes and on the paths. The result is a fence with a bunch of plants mixed in the mud.
The video talks about warm beds for strawberries:
A few other ideas for arranging beds for planting strawberries
In addition to achieving the main goal of harvesting, strawberry beds can be a good decoration for the yard. Plants are ideal for vertical gardening, while allowing you to feast on delicious fruits. Now we will look at the photo beds for strawberries with our own hands, and briefly get acquainted with the technology of their manufacture.
High beds
You can make high beds for planting strawberries from any wooden or plastic boxes. They can even be placed in the yard instead of flower beds. Thanks to the lattice structure, the beds from the boxes have excellent drainage.
Vertical beds
If there is enough space in the garden only for growing basic vegetables, vertical beds for strawberries are built in the yard, allowing you to pick berries without bending down, standing upright. Any containers are taken as a basis, whether it be flower pots or cut plastic bottles. They are attached to any vertical structure. A mesh fence is best, but you can use a dead tree trunk, a barn wall, etc. A strawberry bush is planted in each pot, where it bears fruit all summer.
Popular vertical beds made of PVC sewer pipe. Using tees, elbows and crosses, you can assemble a whole wall with growing strawberries. Pipes with a diameter of 100 mm are covered with fertile soil, holes are cut out in the side walls, where bushes are planted.
On the video you can see what a vertical bed from a pipe represents:
wooden pyramid
Strawberry beds placed on a wooden pyramid look beautiful. A three- or quadrangular pyramid is knocked down from timber and boards, where cells under the ground with plants are equipped on the side walls. The design can be installed in the yard instead of a flower garden.
Vertical bed of bags
When a gardener has a question about how to make beds for strawberries, if there are no building materials at hand, ordinary cloth bags will be the way out of the situation. They can be sewn independently from durable fabric, burlap or geotextile. Each bag is filled with soil and fixed to any vertical support, as was done with flower pots. It is convenient to free strawberries planted in bags from weeds. Water the plants through the top open part of the bag.
Pyramids from car tires
Old car tires make excellent beds for strawberries in the form of a pyramid. Only for this you will have to assemble tires of different diameters and cut a side shelf close to the tread on one side. Starting with the largest tire, they fold the pyramid, filling the space with fertile soil. When the structure is assembled, 4–5 strawberry bushes are planted in each tire.
If it was possible to find tires of only the same size, then they are simply folded one on one, filled with soil, a window is cut on the side of the tread, where strawberries are planted.
Conclusion
Now that you know how to make strawberry beds the right way, you can try growing delicious berries in the summer. Let the first harvest not be too generous, with the advent of experience everything will work out.