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If you have ever had to buy good varieties of strawberries, then you know firsthand that such excellent samples of breeding work are not cheap. Therefore, often we can afford to purchase only a few bushes. But a real gardener from a few bushes can easily grow a whole strawberry plantation. This is easy to do if you know how to plant correctly and when to propagate strawberries with a mustache.
Terms of planting
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 carry out garden work. But still, most gardeners insist on the benefits of autumn planting. Why?
When you transplant strawberries in the fall, the next season you will be able to enjoy the berries that will grow on new bushes. Of course, you should not hope that there will be many berries, because the peak of productivity falls in the second year of fruiting. But still, you won’t be completely without strawberries. If you decide to plant plants in the spring, then in the summer they will not bear fruit, and in order to enjoy the taste and aroma of berries, you will have to wait another whole year.
You need to update the strawberry garden every four years. Already in the third year of fruiting, the yield decreases markedly, and in the fourth year you can be 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 plant strawberries in August, but remember that autumn planting must be completed before September 15th. Therefore, it is not worth pulling with this matter. For transplanting strawberries, choose a cloudy day, then there is a high probability that the bushes will take root.
Useful precursors
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 eggplant, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers is far from the best idea, because they can transfer their viral diseases to strawberries.
The best predecessors of berries are carrots, various greens, radishes and beets.
Landing technique step by step
When inexperienced gardeners buy a few bushes of a good variety of strawberries, they forget that the bush should produce either berries or mustaches. There are no options here. But the scale of expectations of non-craftsmen can only be envied: if berries – then a bucket, if seedlings – then for a whole plantation. As a result, strawberries, having spent all their strength on fruiting, give a weak mustache. As a result, planted plants give a poor harvest, berries lose their presentation, strawberries get sick too often. What to do? Don’t chase two rabbits.
Therefore, the propagation of strawberries with a mustache should begin with the choice of mother bushes. To do this, immediately after planting the plants, remove the whiskers from all the bushes and wait for the berries to appear. After that, it’s time to take a closer look at the strawberry bushes. Those that were able to survive all the vagaries of the weather well, and also gave very large berries, need to be marked with a sticker, an ordinary stick or a string. This is not so important, as long as you can then notice these bushes. They will be mothers.
If you want, you can even plant them on another bed. This is not an extra waste of time and effort, believe me, this way you only simplify your task. And when the uterine bushes bloom next season, remove all the buds, because we do not need the plants to bloom, and even more so, to set berries. Then the bushes, willy-nilly, will put all their strength not into seeds, but into vegetative propagation (in mustaches).
Already in June, the plants will give a mustache, on which rosettes will soon be tied. Leave only especially large, as well as powerful mustaches, do not spare a trifle, cut it off, it will not be useful to us.
If you have the opportunity, then shorten the strawberry mustache, 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 can have two options:
- Attach the sockets to the ground, slightly digging them into the soil. After that, they need to be watered and looked after, as for ordinary seedlings.
- Do not separate the rosettes from the mother plant, but simply plant each in a small pot. Soon, rosettes will be able to develop an independent root system.
Care after
Caring for strawberries requires special work, as well as knowledge. If you decide to plant plants with a mustache, then know that you must take care of the bushes after planting.
If you chose to plant strawberries in the fall, then the rains will moisten the soil. But in dry weather, it is necessary to water the seedlings every day until they take root. Under one bush you need to pour up to a liter of water. Remember to remove weeds and loosen the soil. Strawberries are a big fan 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 insulate strawberries in advance with sawdust, spruce branches, peat. Straw will also work.
In the next season, part 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 maintain the variety, as well as the yield of berries.
Video “How to propagate strawberries”
On the recording, Pavel Trannua tells how to plant a strawberry mustache, while saving precious time without compromising the result.
