4 critical mistakes in preparing Strawberries for winter, often made by novice summer residents because of "tips"
Do you want your strawberries to withstand the winter cold and give a generous harvest next year? Then a fiery salute, comrade caring summer resident! Today on the agenda are annoying mistakes in preparing strawberries for winter, made due to stupid advice from the Internet.. The experienced one will laugh - the beginner will believe and be mistaken!
Water: but what if?
To begin with, a piece of advice that I read recently and which can seem stupid even to a person far from gardening. One of the articles advised "not to allow the soil to dry out and regularly water the strawberries before the cold weather."
The advice may be good for the climate of Central Asia. In most of Russia, strawberries do not need watering since the end of August.. Nature does everything for the gardener!
Moreover: excess moisture is an invitation to visit all kinds of fungi. From spotting to rotting. Hopelessly wet strawberry bushes will not be happy to meet the first frost.
Trim from the heart
Truly they say: "The best is the enemy of the good"! I have no doubt that strawberries need to be cut for the winter: old and diseased leaves. And then - leaving a stump.
A beginner, on the other hand, can hold a sickle over these same strawberries almost level with the ground. And he will cut off the so-called horns of the bush - "horn", in which already, in August, flower buds were laid for the next year (we did not feed the strawberries for nothing after flowering, right?). If you damage the contents of the horns, there will be no more flowers. And, as a result, berries.
Thoroughly weed and loosen
An absolutely wild advice is to get busy weeding. A surefire way to help some of the roots of our strawberry plantation get caught in the frost. Especially young: immature and unprepared to meet with a serious disadvantage.
Comrade! Pulling out and loosening the ground, the short-sighted strawberry grower unwittingly opens fresh roots to streams of frosty air. It was worth doing sanitary work in August. For now, it's best to leave the plants alone.
Cover so as not to freeze
I don’t know, comrades, where did the fashion come from to cover everything in the garden for the winter. Strawberries do not need shelter, and the best "warm blanket" for bushes is... snow.
The only thing that can be done is hilling bushes. It will help preserve everything, even the thinnest roots. This means that in the spring, strawberries will turn into a powerful plant, ready to give a generous harvest.
The moral of the Autumn Strawberry Fable is this: Sometimes it's better to just leave the strawberries alone than to engage in questionable activities. Are you growing strawberries and the article was interesting? Press, comrade, "Thumbs up"! Sincerely yours, third-generation strawberry grower Fyodor Tyapkin-Sklyankin, who reads Internet tips with a grin!