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Some gardeners consider strawberries a picky plant that requires special care, others claim that the culture can grow in any conditions. Be that as it may, it will take a lot of effort to get a generous harvest. Bushes begin to be planted in August and finish in September. By this time, the seats should already be prepared. At home, you can use different strawberry beds, but the future harvest will depend on how they are arranged.
Where is it better to break a garden
Strawberries and strawberries are best grown in a well-lit area. The plant loves light and warmth, but if such a place is located in a lowland, it is undesirable to break a bed here. The fact is that the soil in low areas can freeze through even in late spring, which threatens the plant with death.
Location beds for planting strawberries even affects the taste of berries. Although the culture loves light, it can also be planted in a shaded area. Ripe berries will pick up a little sugar, but they will acquire more flavor. Such a crop is ideal for preserving jam, drying preparation and other processing. If strawberries are grown only for fresh consumption, then they are planted in the sun. The berries ripen less aromatic, but with a greater accumulation of sugar.
You can not break strawberry beds in the place where representatives of this family grew up last year. Plants pull the same nutrients from the soil in addition to common pests. Most of them hibernate in the soil, and with the onset of spring they wake up and begin to destroy a new crop. Fruit trees have a bad effect on strawberries: apple, cherry, apricot, plum, etc. It is undesirable for wild rose and bird cherry to bloom nearby. If in the past years raspberries, blackberries, strawberries or roses grew on the site, you must refuse to plant strawberries in this place.
Seat preparation rules
Most often, strawberries are planted simply in the garden or in the garden, without creating vertical beds and other complex structures. This method is also effective if one simple rule was observed when preparing the site:
- All garbage is removed from the area allocated for planting strawberries. In the garden, this can be foliage and small branches.
- Even if the garden has been plowed in the fall, the site is once again dug up with a shovel to the depth of a bayonet.
- Top dressing is done with humus. Fertilizer is scattered at the rate of 1 bucket per 1 m2 beds.
After soil preparation on the garden bed markings are made in the form of strips for planting strawberries.
When making a bed for strawberries, you must not forget about the furrows dividing it. Excess rainwater will accumulate in these grooves. Strawberries love watering, but they do not belong to moisture-loving plants. From an excess of moisture around the root system, rot is formed with a large number of parasites. Furrows will divert excess water from the roots. The strawberry grooves themselves should not be dug deep.The plant will grow more slowly, which will affect the amount of the crop.
The finished bed with strawberries should turn out to be on a dais. The intermediate furrows ideally deepen by 25 cm. This is sufficient for good drainage. During harvesting, a person walks along these furrows. The integrity of the hole with the plant is preserved, but the groove itself cannot be violated, otherwise the water drainage will be violated.
The optimal size of a strawberry bed and planting rules
So, now is the time to learn how to properly plant a strawberry garden. To achieve good yields, we adhere to the following rules:
- The holes made for strawberry bushes should be at a distance of about 40 cm from each other. Such parameters will provide free space for good plant development.
- The width of the strip where the strawberries will grow is kept within 20 cm. A 30 cm wide furrow is cut between each strip. The result is one bed 50 cm wide, consisting of a strip and a furrow.
- The location of the stripes on the site is done in the direction from east to west. With this planting, strawberries receive uniform sunlight.
After they have broken a bed for strawberries, they start planting plants. This must be done carefully so as not to damage the root system. After planting all the bushes, the plants are watered with room water at the root. It is advisable not to wet the foliage.
Even in order to save space, the strawberry bed should not be thickened with plants. The close arrangement of the bushes will lead to their slow development. Worse if one of the plants gets sick. With a close planting, the disease will instantly spread throughout all plantings. In addition, it must be remembered that strawberries in the spring have a long mustache that can intertwine with each other. Overgrown furrows make it difficult to weed weeds... The mustache can be accidentally chopped off with a hoe, and even hooked on the main bush.
It should be assumed that any strawberry beds will last no more than four years. After that, the bushes are transplanted to another place. During this time, the plants suck out all the nutrients from the soil, and with further strawberry cultivation, the yield will decrease, and the berries will become very small.
Low strawberry bed by German technology
Above, we examined the simplest option for arranging a strawberry garden in the garden or in the garden. The method is considered simple, and affordable for novice gardeners. However, the simplest beds do not allow you to get the maximum strawberry yield that plants can bring. Now we will consider what other technologies for growing strawberries exist, and we will start with a German garden.
This system provides for the manufacture of boxes. Beads made of boards or any other material are separators of strips with strawberries in the garden, and are installed instead of the furrow. That is, you need to make a bed with a width of 40 to 80 cm, consisting of one strip of strawberries, and enclose it with sides. If the bed is made with a width of 80 cm and a little more, then strawberries can be planted in two rows.
When making a low strawberry bed using German technology, the following steps are taken:
- On the site, markings are applied to the size of the box. This place is cleared of debris and weeds.
- The box is pushed aside. At this point, a sod layer about 40 cm deep is removed. A fence is installed in the resulting depression. The bottom of the pit is covered with any organic waste that can decay. You can use small tree branches, newspapers, corn stalks, etc.
- From above, organic matter is covered with a layer of fertile soil, after which the surface of the garden is leveled. Strawberries are planted in rows, the number of which depends on the width of the fence. One row is made in narrow boxes.If the width of the fence allows you to make several rows, then a 50 cm wide furrow is made between them. At the end of the planting of all strawberry bushes, brick or tile paths are laid out in these areas.
The presence of fences on strawberry plantations has a positive effect not only on the amount of the crop, but also on the maintenance of the plants. The gardener gets free access to each bush. This makes it easier to water, weed, fertilize and other plant care procedures. Fences do not allow the soil to erode during the rain, and creeping weeds to penetrate the strawberry garden. If the plants in the same fence are sick, the disease will not be able to infect the neighboring plantings. The strawberry bed bead solves the problem of mustache entanglement. They are not intertwined, as is the case in a regular garden.
Despite the presence of fences, it is still necessary to water low strawberry beds using a special technology. When using a garden watering can, watering is performed in a circular motion, preventing the soil from eroding near the bush until the roots appear. You can do this process with a hose. In this case, a rag is wound around its end, capable of passing water well. Watering is carried out at the root of the plant.
Careless watering of the garden bed with a hose with a diffuser will erode the soil under the bushes and on the paths. As a result, you get a fence with a bunch of plants mixed in the mud.
The video tells about warm beds for strawberries:
A few other ideas for arranging strawberry beds
In addition to achieving the main goal of obtaining a harvest, strawberry beds can be a good decoration for the yard. Plants are ideal for vertical gardening, while allowing you to feast on delicious fruits. Now we will look at the photo of strawberry beds with our own hands, and briefly get acquainted with the technology of their production.
High beds
To make high beds for planting strawberries, you can use any wooden or plastic boxes... They can even be placed in the yard instead of flower beds. Thanks to the lattice structure, the crate beds have excellent drainage.
Vertical beds
If there is enough space in the garden only for growing basic vegetables, they build in the yard vertical beds for strawberries, allowing you to pick berries without bending, standing upright. Any containers are taken as a basis, be it flower pots or cut ones. plastic bottles... They are attached to any vertical structure. A mesh fence works best, but you can use a dry tree trunk, barn wall, etc. A strawberry bush is planted in each pot, where it bears fruit all summer.
Popular vertical beds made of PVC sewer pipe. Using tees, elbows and crosses, you can assemble an entire wall of growing strawberries. Pipes with a diameter of 100 mm are covered with fertile soil, holes are cut out in the side walls, where the bushes are planted.
In the video you can see what a vertical bed of a pipe represents:
Wooden pyramid
Strawberry beds, placed on a wooden pyramid, look beautiful. A three- or quadrangular pyramid is knocked down from a bar and boards, where cells are equipped on the side walls for soil with plants. The structure can be installed in the yard instead of a flower garden.
Vertical bed of bags
When the gardener has a question, how to make beds under strawberries, if there are no building materials at hand, ordinary cloth bags will be a way out of the situation. You can sew them yourself from durable fabric, burlap or geotextile. Each bag is filled with soil and fixed to any vertical support, as was done with flower pots. Strawberries planted in bags are conveniently free from weeds. Water the plants through the top open part of the bag.
Car tire pyramids
Old car tires make great pyramid-shaped strawberry beds. Only for this you will have to collect tires of different diameters and on one side cut the side shelf close to the tread. Starting with the largest tire, a pyramid is folded, filling the space with fertile soil. When the structure is assembled, 4–5 strawberry bushes are planted in each tire.
If it was possible to find tires of only the same size, then they are simply folded one by one, filled with soil, a window is cut on the side of the tread, where strawberries are planted.
Conclusion
Now that you know how to properly make strawberry beds, you can try growing delicious berries in the summer. Let the first harvest not be too generous, with the advent of experience everything will work out.
