Strawberries, or large-fruited garden strawberries, are the most popular and beloved berry among summer residents. In order for the bushes to develop quickly and delight with large and fragrant berries in the summer, you need to take care of the plantings in the spring: tidy up the beds, be sure to treat and feed the plants.
Spring work on caring for strawberries can begin when the soil warms up and the bushes begin to grow. And if you want to get an early strawberry harvest, then you should not delay spring care.
Sanitary pruning and weeding of strawberries
First of all, inspect the garden strawberry bushes and remove all dried and diseased leaves, last year's runners and rosettes that died over the winter. Carefully collect and burn all plant debris, as it may contain phytopathogenic microorganisms and pest larvae. Do not remove healthy strawberry leaves, so as not to weaken the plants.
Cut off old leaves and tendrils with pruning shears or scissors. If you tear off leaves with your hands, you can damage young bushes or even pull them out of the ground.
After sanitary pruning, remove weeds and loosen the space between the rows, trying not to damage the roots of the bushes. When loosening the soil, work carefully and do not forget that the root system of garden strawberries does not go deep and is located mainly in the upper 20 cm of soil. You can process the space between the rows with a hoe or flat cutter, and it is better not to use a rake, so as not to damage the young leaves of the bushes.
Treatment against diseases and pests
Strawberries are often affected by gray mold, brown and white spot, anthracnose and other fungal diseases. Therefore, after cleaning the bed before flowering, it is important to carry out preventive treatment against diseases. For this, you can use copper-containing preparations (1% Bordeaux mixture, HOM, OxyHOM, etc.), as well as systemic drugs based on propiconazole.
When warm weather comes, to protect strawberries from diseases, instead of chemical fungicides, it is recommended to use biological preparations based on hay bacillus and trichoderma: Fitosporin-M, etc. Fitoverm will help cope with pests. Preventive treatment of strawberries with biological preparations should be carried out every 10-14 days.
If strawberry bushes often suffer from the strawberry-raspberry weevil, which causes unopened flowers to dry up, then during the period of budding, the plantings can be treated with insecticides based on cypermethrin and malathion (carbophos): Karbotsin, Inta-Ts-M, etc. However, do not forget that the waiting period after using these preparations is 20-30 days - this must be taken into account when spraying early strawberry bushes.
Strawberry treatment against diseases and pests can be combined with fertilizing. Fertilizers containing amino acids are best suited for this.
To protect strawberry plantings from soil pests (mole cricket, wireworm, cockchafer larvae, cutworm), add biopreparations based on entomopathogenic fungi metarhizium and beauveria to the soil. Entomopathogenic microorganisms penetrate the body of the insect, settle there and cause its death. For example, to treat the soil from the May beetle, you can use such preparations as Biofort and Boverin.
Preparations based on the fungi Metarhizium and Boveria are diluted in settled non-chlorinated water at room temperature, poured into a sprayer or watering can and added to the planting holes or watered at the roots of the plants. When transplanting bushes, the roots can be dipped in an earthen slurry with the addition of the preparation.
When using entomopathogenic nematodes and fungi, the temperature should be at least 16-17 ° C, soil moisture - within 50-70%.
Top dressing
Strawberries form healthy spreading bushes and large berries only if there is a sufficient amount of nutrients in the soil. It is recommended to apply a complete complex fertilizer at the stage of preparing the site for planting the crop. And strawberries that grow in the same place for more than one year need special attention, since each season they remove a large amount of nutrients from the soil, while the bushes age and become depleted. Therefore, it is recommended to renew the plantings every 3-4 years, transplanting young rosettes to a new bed.
However, it is worth considering that such feeding does not begin to work immediately: the root system of plants absorbs all the necessary nutrients gradually, over the course of a month. Therefore, the plantings can be additionally watered with a solution of concentrate for strawberries (200 ml per 10 liters of water) - this will give the plants a good start, accelerate the development of the bushes, ensure abundant flowering and fruiting.
With the correct use of vitamin complexes, strawberries quickly build up vegetative mass, form larger and tastier berries, and the bushes are less sick and easily tolerate adverse weather conditions.
Watering
In spring, strawberries need watering when the top layer of soil begins to dry out. If there is no rain, then the bushes growing in sunny areas, on raised beds, often suffer from drying out of the soil already in May. Without sufficient moisture, the process of photosynthesis is hampered, plants cannot absorb nutrients from the soil, build up vegetative mass, which subsequently significantly reduces the yield.
Therefore, in sunny weather, regularly water the strawberry plantings, especially if the soil is not mulched. For watering, use settled water warmed in the sun. Before the first flowers appear, you can water the beds using the sprinkling method, and later it is better to use root watering.
Mulching
The final stage of spring care for garden strawberries is mulching. After processing, watering and fertilizing, cover the row spacing with wood chips, straw, hay, rotted sawdust or other available material. This will help improve the soil structure - after all, beneficial fungi and bacteria, including hay bacillus, metarhizium and beauveria, develop well under a layer of mulch. In addition, mulching allows strawberries to more actively build up their root system, protects the bushes from temperature changes.
To create a denser layer of mulch, which will also serve as additional fertilizer, strawberry plantings can first be mulched with a layer of rotted sawdust or horse compost, and then lay mulch of a larger fraction on top: shavings, chips, bark, etc.
If you are going to create a new bed of garden strawberries, you can immediately cover the soil with agrotextile and plant the bushes in the holes made. For mulching the beds, you can use black, black and white, black and yellow spunbond with a density of 50-80 g / sq.m or more. Two-color spunbond is laid on the ground with the light side up - as a result, the soil does not overheat, and weeds do not grow, and the berries always remain clean and are stored better.