Strawberry Festival Chamomile

Growing strawberries in garden plots is becoming more and more popular. If experienced gardeners have already decided on varieties, then beginners face a difficult task when choosing seeds or seedlings of garden strawberries. After all, today breeders all over the world every year present to the public all new varieties of sweet, fragrant berries.

We want to talk about garden strawberries, created back in the days of the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that the variety has been around for many years, Strawberry Festival Chamomile is not going to leave summer cottages and farm plots. On the contrary, she continues to win the hearts of gardeners. The features of the variety of garden strawberries, cultivation and will be discussed.

Characteristic features of the variety

Strawberry Festival Chamomile of medium ripening, according to the description of the variety, numerous photos and reviews of gardeners, today remains popular among many gardeners in the open spaces. Although the variety was bred in the last century. The author of garden strawberries with an interesting name is the breeder Yu. K. Katinskaya. She crossed two varieties of garden strawberries – Abundant and Premier. At the same time, she retained the best qualities of each of the “parents”.

What attracts gardeners strawberry Festival Chamomile:

1. Garden strawberries have a compact, semi-spreading, fairly tall bush. The leaves are medium, dull green, slightly wrinkled.
2. There is an important difference between Festival Chamomile and other varieties of strawberries, which cannot be ignored when describing. The mass formation of bright green mustache with a reddish tinge makes it a little more difficult to care for plantings.
3. The plant throws out a large number of peduncles with bisexual flowers. They differ in strength and density. With a thickness of a pencil, flower stalks practically do not bend under the weight of numerous fruits. The successful arrangement of peduncles at the level of the leaves or slightly below. Ripening fruits are well ventilated and evenly warmed by the sun’s rays.
4. In the southern regions and central Our Country, the first festivals can be tried already in the second half of June. Gardeners living in a more severe climate – two weeks later. Fruiting lasts until frost.
5. The berries are quite large, especially at the first harvest. Their weight reaches 35-45 grams. The last fruits will be twice as small.
6. Strawberries Festival Chamomile, according to the description of the photo variety and reviews of gardeners, have irregularly shaped berries, slightly flattened from the sides. Often, deep grooves can be observed on the fruits. Look at the photo, this is what the berries of a popular variety look like.

   

7. The fruits are bright red, with a pronounced luster. Moreover, the pulp is exactly the same color. The berries are juicy, sweet and sour, dense, which is very important for large strawberry producers. Berries have high keeping quality and transportability. They do not crumple during transportation, do not flow.
8. General purpose variety. Berries are good both for fresh consumption and for canning, freezing, because they do not lose their shape.
9. Strawberries of this variety are characterized by abundant fruiting and stable yields. From one bush you can collect up to 500 grams of fruit.
10. Festival Chamomile belongs to drought- and frost-resistant varieties, so even gardeners in the northern regions of Our Country are engaged in its cultivation. It can be grown outdoors, under film or in a greenhouse.
11. Plants are resistant to many strawberry diseases due to high immunity.

If we talk about the shortcomings of the strawberry variety Festival Chamomile, then, according to gardeners:

• plants cannot resist powdery mildew and verticillium wilt. In the photo you can see what strawberry leaves affected by this disease look like.

  

• often you have to deal with the “repair” of strawberry beds, as the plants begin to lose their properties.

Methods of reproduction

Since strawberry plantings often need to be rejuvenated, novice gardeners are often interested in how they can provide themselves with high-quality and healthy planting material. As a rule, seeds and seedlings sold in stores are not cheap, restoring beds with purchased material will cost a pretty penny.

Strawberry variety Festival Chamomile reproduces, like most relatives, in different ways:

• growing seedlings from seeds;
• rooting of mustache rosettes:
• division of the mother bush.

Seed Reproduction

It should be noted right away that seed propagation of garden strawberries, regardless of variety, is possible only with store seeds. In this case, varietal qualities that correspond to the description are preserved by 90%. Plants obtained from self-collected seeds do not have this feature. The fact is that different varieties of garden strawberries grow on the beds, the flowers are pollinated. Strawberry seeds should be sown in early February.

Rooting rosettes from a mustache

Festival Chamomile produces an abundance of strong green whiskers with a reddish tinge. When strawberries bloom and bear fruit, the mustache must be cut off, otherwise they will deplete the bush. This will negatively affect not only the quantity of the crop, but also the size and quality of the fruit.

In order to obtain a crop and planting material for strawberries of this variety, some of the plants are allowed to grow on mother liquors. Their flower stalks are removed, and the mustache is given free rein. On a healthy bush, no more than five mustaches are left. Root, as a rule, the first outlet. This can be done both on the bed itself and in cups, as in the photo below.

You can root your mustache at any time. If you need planting material for next year, then rooting rosettes is best done at the end of August. Planting material grown in pots is simply removed in a cool place.

In other regions, seedlings are transplanted to a permanent place and covered for the winter as usual.

Division of the bush

The easiest way is to plant delenok, since parts from a disassembled bush are immediately planted in the garden. They take root quickly. But the most important thing is that the harvest can be obtained in the year of planting, if this work is carried out in early spring.

Features of care

Based on the description of the variety and its characteristics, it is not difficult to grow Festival Chamomile strawberries.

The main thing:

1. Choose a sunny place, fertile, breathable soil. It is better to plant seedlings in beds where carrots, garlic, onions, zucchini and pumpkin previously grew. In the shade and after potatoes, planting tomatoes is not recommended due to poor lighting and the possibility of fungal diseases.
2. When planting, take into account the distance between the bushes of at least 25 cm. When planting in two rows, the row spacing should be about 60 cm. Landing diagram below in the photo.

All other agrotechnical methods of caring for Festival Chamomile strawberries are no different: watering, loosening, weeding, timely feeding, pest and disease control.

Gardener’s opinion about Festival Chamomile and growing secrets:

Reviews of gardeners