5 steps to a rich strawberry harvest

If someone decided to make a hit parade of garden crops, then strawberries would certainly be at its top. Even if your summer cottage is very small, there will always be a place for strawberries, they are cared for and cherished in the hope of a rich harvest. How to achieve this harvest? There are many recommendations, sometimes they contradict each other, but you can still highlight the basic rules and call on the latest fertilizers and stimulants to help you, make every effort to get an excellent strawberry harvest.

Strawberry Harvest: Spring Pruning

First of all, after the snow has melted, you need to start cleaning the strawberry plot and preparing it for the summer season. Carefully rake up any debris left over from last year. Wait until the weather is stable and warm and start pruning. Examine mature bushes, remove any diseased and dry leaves. If the leaf is partially dry, then while it can be left, let it fulfill its role in the process of photosynthesis. But later, when new leaves grow, remove the partially damaged ones. Check young bushes - if they have already formed buds, they need to be cut off, before flowering the plant should be strong enough. Remove all cut waste from the site, or rather burn it, since plant waste is the main breeding ground for diseases and pests. Be sure to water the strawberries 2-3 days after pruning.

Watering rules

Strawberries are very fond of water, they need moisture to form berries. This is one of the main conditions for obtaining a good harvest - the soil must be constantly moist. Watering is necessary 1-2 times a week, in no case should you use a strong stream (it will wash out the soil at the roots and can damage them) and cold water from a well or from a well (for a plant, this is equivalent to frost). You can water with long sprinkling early in the morning, but the best option would be a drip irrigation system: moisture is consumed sparingly, and the earth is constantly moist just as much as necessary. Such a system is not difficult to make on your own using a barrel and medical droppers. And in order to maintain soil moisture for a longer time, a plot with strawberries is mulched.

Strawberry harvest: mulching

Initially, the English began to practice mulching (translated into Russian "shelter"). They covered the ground under the strawberry bushes with straw so that the berries would not lie on the ground and not get dirty. But gradually the more useful properties of such a shelter were revealed: weeds disappeared (they simply died in the absence of light under a layer of mulch), slugs ceased to encroach on berries, since movement on straw or sawdust was extremely difficult for them.

Well, and most importantly, it turned out that this retains moisture in the upper soil layer and helps to establish the necessary irrigation regime. Therefore, one of the steps on the way to a large strawberry harvest is mandatory mulching after planting strawberry bushes. As mulch, you can use straw, sawdust, chopped green manure plants (natural fertilizers), last year's healthy leaves - the main thing is that the material is rotted.

Fresh mulch in the process of decomposition can take food from plants, and half-decomposed, on the contrary, is itself available food. Forming berries, strawberries take a huge amount of nutrients from the ground, and mulching just helps to provide them in the right amount.Lay a layer of mulch at least 5-7 cm, and maintain it all summer so that it does not decrease (a smaller layer will not retain moisture and will not slow down the growth of weeds).

Fertilizers

Strawberries respond very well to fertilization, but in strictly limited quantities, no frills. A large amount of mineral fertilizers stimulates the active growth of greens to the detriment of fruits (they become watery and their quantity decreases significantly), that is, with an increase in labor costs, the quality and quantity of the crop decreases.

The best option is to fertilize the soil with organic fertilizer before planting strawberries, and then fertilize with special means, such as Agricola for berry crops. This fertilizer will provide strawberries with all the necessary trace elements, increase frost resistance, and also accelerate the ripening of berries, positively affecting their size and weight. And also "Agricola" helps strawberries to accumulate vitamins and sugar, which is also important. In addition to fertilizers, you can also use simulators that promote flowering, preservation of ovaries, thereby increasing the yield.

Strawberry harvest: stimulating

Stimulants are drugs that improve and accelerate the processes that occur with the plant during growth and maturation. In the case of strawberries, they increase the immunity of the plant, stimulate flowering, and prevent the ovaries from falling off. The use of stimulants helps to reduce labor costs, while the yield increases and its quality increases. The most popular, effective and safe for plants and humans is the drug "Bud" - a stimulator of fruit formation, which is developed on the basis of natural ingredients. Natural compounds in a perfectly matched combination provide the versatility of the drug and allow it to be used for a wide variety of fruit and berry and vegetable crops. That is, you can use it not only for strawberries, but also for cucumbers - it will significantly reduce the number of barren flowers. It has a positive effect on the frost resistance and immunity of plants, increases the number of ovaries, accelerates the ripening of berries, and increases the yield by about 30%.

Strawberries must be processed twice. First time in spring, during flowering, to increase yields. And the second time - after harvesting, this will help the plant gain strength and increase immunity. In order to achieve the desired (and not the opposite) result, it is important to strictly follow the instructions when working with the drug: observe the indicated concentration of the solution and the treatment intervals. Dilute the drug in water at room temperature and use the solution immediately after preparation, process the plants only in the morning or in the evening.

Immediately dispose of the solution remaining after processing, wash hands and containers for preparing solutions. If you harvest and prune strawberries on time, establish the correct irrigation system, mulch the soil under the bushes and promptly help the plants with fertilizing and stimulants, believe me - you can amaze everyone around with an unprecedented harvest. The Agricola fertilizer gives the strawberries food, and the Bud drug helps to absorb this food faster, so the combined use of these drugs will only enhance the positive effect.

Try it and you will succeed. Have a nice harvest!