Novice gardeners, planted on a plot of strawberries garden, at first when caring for her listen to the”word of mouth”. However, picked up tips from unreliable sources, quickly sad: harvest not happy and every year is getting worse. Only with experience comes the understanding that this miniature berry is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Strawberry is unforgiving of gross errors in the care and primarily offended by the careless and untimely pruning.
“Word of mouth” keeps saying that strawberries need to be cut, but that’s why and when to carry out this procedure often can not really explain. Let’s look at this important issue.
Why you need trim
Strawberries, despite the lack of woody shoots, pruning is not less than other berries. Since this crop is perennial, annual mowing helps rejuvenate the bushes, maintain high yields and extend the life of plants.
Add problems in the care of strawberry beds numerous pests that attack the bushes throughout the season. Removing old leaves, you help protect plants from harmful insects, not giving them the opportunity to settle for the winter nearby.
This garden culture is allocated a small sprout and spends all his life near the wet (and often cold) land, so often suffers from fungal diseases. Timely pruning foliage, you will not allow the aggravation of the disease, quickly cure with fungicides affected plants and do not allow the infection to spread to healthy specimens. If the berry plantation looks healthy, then pruning will be a preventive measure in the fight against fungal diseases and will save us from unpleasant surprises and additional hassle in the future.
How and when to crop
Beginners who had heard about the whims of remontant varieties, decide to first learn the basics of strawberry science on ordinary varieties of fruit 1 time per year in the early summer. In order for this crop to bring joy, it is necessary to strengthen the immunity of plants with the help of annual pruning. During the procedure, cut all the old leaves on the bushes, leaving small young leaves. With the right approach, strawberries can easily tolerate such a haircut and quickly build up a new leaf outlet. The life of a strawberry leaf is about 3 months.
Autumn pruning
Many growers delay pruning strawberries in the fall. During this period Affairs in the garden becomes less, and finally there is the opportunity to engage in a strawberry patch. But by this time running berry usually begins to MOPE and is a sad picture. The surface of the soil under the bushes lined with dead leaves, many living leaves are no longer green, and variegated-with pink, brown or white spots (depending on the disease that decorated them). Complete landscape dry stalks sticking out. And I want to quickly restore order and beauty to the garden, cutting off each leaf outlet at the base!
Don’t hurry! Such a radical pruning, carried out in the fall, will cause severe damage to plants, endangering not only health, but also the life of the bushes. This culture is winter-green. It does not shed its leaves in the autumn, as many berry growers do, but renews its leaves gradually throughout the year.
In autumn, the green leaves accumulate spare substances, thanks to which the tissues of the plant do not freeze in winter. In addition, in the cold, the foliage serves as protection for the horns and flower buds, delays snow and warms them. Removing the entire leaf rosette in the autumn, you greatly weaken the bushes in anticipation of frost and will leave hearts at the mercy of winter adversity.
If you still decide to spend the autumn pruning, remove only dried leaves and stems, and green leaves certainly leave. If you notice signs of disease, cut the affected instances, and then soak left leaf rosette with a solution of suitable fungicide. All plant residues be sure to remove from the garden and burn.
Spring pruning
With the arrival of spring warming, overwintered green foliage will first begin the process of photosynthesis, which will be the key to the active development of a new leaf apparatus and the formation of a generous harvest. Therefore, to cut the green leaves of strawberries in the spring is to ruin the future harvest. Plants will direct all their forces to build new foliage, but the forces on the formation of the ovary they will not remain.
However, in the early spring after the snow melts, you should definitely carry out a corrective pruning: remove the frozen, damaged, with signs of disease leaves – they can become a source of infection throughout the strawberry plantation. After this procedure, provide therapeutic (or prophylactic) treatment of the plants with a solution of fungicide and trimmed all the leaves burned.
Summer pruning
Until the harvest in the leaves of strawberries will be the most important processes that directly affect the size and quality of the berries. Therefore, in the spring and in the first half of summer, you should help the outlets stay lush and healthy with timely watering, fertilizing and preventive spraying from diseases and pests.
But when you remove the last berries from the bushes, it will be the most favorable time for a rejuvenating haircut. The bushes, spend all the forces on the bearing, it becomes difficult to contain such lush foliage. Therefore, drastic pruning will help them to regroup, rest, and then do not less important – laying of flower buds for the next season. At the same time, new young leaves will grow, which by autumn will turn into lush rosettes and will become the key to a successful wintering of plants.
Pruning everbearing strawberries
Remontant strawberry is able to give 2 crops per season, and some varieties of fruiting waves occur almost imperceptibly, and the plants continue to continuously ripen berries from June to late autumn.
Therefore, the drastic pruning of the leaves of everbearing strawberries is not carried out. Throughout the season, you need to constantly monitor the plants and selectively remove dried and damaged leaf plates.
Trimming mustache
And remontant, and common strawberry have a unique ability: to constantly strive for vegetative propagation and release huge amounts of whiskers. There are also beardless varieties, but they have not yet received such wide distribution among summer residents as their “whiskered” counterparts.
Air shoots pull a lot of juices from their “mothers”, weaken them and cause damage to the crop. Therefore, you will need to regularly inspect the strawberry plantation and cut out all the mustaches appearing on the bushes.
The only exception is the situation when you really need to breed a favorite variety. In the spring of note in the garden sturdiest bushes and leave it on for each 2-3 of the strongest shoots. All other whiskers, which will be for them to appear, you need to remove. When the shoots take root and get stronger, you can separate the new rosettes from the mother plants and transplant to a new bed.
Basic rules of pruning
The effectiveness of pruning depends not only on the timing, but also on how carefully you handle the plants during this important procedure.
- Arm yourself with sharp clean garden shears or pruners. Some particularly busy summer residents in a hurry to bring “beauty” in strawberry and mow the leaves with a lawn mower or scythe. Such rough tools often damage the hearts of plants, after which they get sick for a long time and refuse to bear fruit normally in the next year.
- Keep your hands leaves and mustache from the sockets – they are quite firmly attached to the hearts. With such a negligent attitude is likely to pull out part of the Bush or severely damage it.
- Try to cut the leaves and whiskers closer to the base socket, but act with the scissors very carefully, not to hurt the hearts of the plants.
- Pruning plants, loosen the soil in the aisles to a depth of 5 cm and remove all weeds from the beds. Simultaneously, Spud bushes with bare hearts and shovel the earth from those copies, of midway which was too recessed.
- After a cardinal haircut ordinary strawberries do not forget to feed the plants, because they will need strength to recover from stress and build new outlets. In the course you can start up as purchased complex preparations, and natural-a solution of mullein and wood ash.
Timely and carefully carried out pruning will be the key to strong immunity of strawberry, will help it to survive weather disasters and not to succumb to the attacks of diseases and pests. Therefore, annually pay special attention to this procedure, and a generous harvest of large sweet berries will not take long to wait.
Dear readers, how do you trim your strawberries? Share with us in the comments your experience and tell us what haircut-spring, summer or autumn, like your berry grower the most.