Autumn pruning of strawberries - schemes and recommendations
Pruning strawberries in the fall is an important care step to help rejuvenate your crop, protect it from disease and prepare it for winter. The autumn procedure has advantages and disadvantages that a novice gardener needs to know. In addition, there is an alternative: a haircut can be done in early spring or summer, after fruiting.
Autumn pruning of strawberries - schemes and recommendations
Purpose of the procedure
Strawberries need proper pruning for several important reasons:
- Removing old leaves helps to rejuvenate the bush, allows it to develop and give a good harvest;
- The procedure helps to avoid damage by diseases and pests;
- After trimming the leaves and whiskers, the roots receive the best nutrition and give the plant the strength for a successful wintering.
Trimming time
In which month it is better to carry out the procedure - everyone decides for himself. Gardeners differ on this issue.
Cutting can be done in early spring, summer (after fruiting) or early fall (September). Each of the three options has advantages and disadvantages.
Spring
In cold and little snowy winters, strawberries often freeze, so in the spring spoiled, frozen and rotten foliage should be cut off. In this case, in no case should you touch healthy leaves.
The procedure helps to get rid of pests and does not reduce the yield (since the buds are laid in the plant since the fall). But if you limit yourself to only spring pruning, the leaves that have aged over time and the regrown mustache will thicken the plantings (with all the ensuing consequences).
Summer
In summer, foliage and mustache are cut after the berries leave. Thus, until the end of the season, the beds will not attract pests, but at the same time they will have time to stock up on the necessary substances, form young leaves and flower buds.
The disadvantage of this method: usually at this time the gardeners have many other worries and they simply postpone the cutting of strawberries until the fall.
Autumn
This method is practiced during cold winters (in the regions of the Moscow region, the Urals, the North-West) in order to improve the winter hardiness of plants - to provide the roots with a supply of nutrients.
In addition, many pests strive to overwinter on the leaves of garden strawberries, and autumn pruning deprives them of this opportunity.
The disadvantage of this procedure is the slow growth of green mass in spring and, as a consequence, the later appearance of berries.
Cutting technology
Green leaves and buds cannot be cut off
If you choose autumn for pruning strawberries, it is extremely important to leave the green leaves and buds intact.
Only spoiled, old and dry foliage can be removed (a diseased leaf is easy to identify by color - it becomes yellowish, brown or brown). In addition, the procedure should include trimming the mustache, as it takes a lot of nutrients from the bushes and thickens the beds.
Errors:
- you cannot cut the entire rosette to the base - you only need to cut the leaf blade, without touching the stems.
- it is forbidden to pick off leaves, peduncles and mustaches with your hands - they are firmly attached, so there is always a risk of pulling out the bush with the roots.
Use a handy pruning shears or garden shears to trim. The tool must be clean and well polished.
For greater benefit, pull up weeds while pruning, loosen row spacings, and huddle bushes as needed.
Do I need to prune remontant varieties
Repairing strawberries are distinguished from ordinary strawberries by the timing of fruiting. It produces a crop twice a season, and some varieties take a whole summer. Therefore, a cardinal haircut for this culture is not carried out.
Nevertheless, the plantings also need thinning, rejuvenation and preventive procedures. The bushes are regularly examined, removing old, diseased or dry leaves as needed. If you do not plan to propagate remontant strawberries with a mustache, trim them too.
The last flower stalks, which will no longer bear fruit, must be cut in the fall. Otherwise, they will take away too many nutrients from the plant.
Follow-up care
It is necessary to get rid of trimmed leaves and whiskers right away - it would be a mistake to leave the trimmings right on the garden bed. They must be carefully raked, carried out and burned.
It is advisable to treat the remaining bushes with Bordeaux liquid or fungicide (even if there are no signs of serious damage, this will be a good prevention of diseases). The soil between the bushes is loosened and weeded, and the plants themselves are spud.
In order for garden strawberries to gain strength after cutting, they need to be fed. As a fertilizer, you can use mullein solution, furnace ash or water-soluble mineral complexes.
To make the culture easier to endure the winter, the beds must be mulched and covered. For these purposes, dry needles, spruce branches, straw, peat are suitable.
Additional Tips
- The timing of the autumn haircut should not be delayed. It is advisable to hold it in early September so that there is as much time as possible before the onset of frost.
- It is better to collect cut leaves immediately in a special container, without leaving them on the ground. The foliage will not have to be raked up later, and there will be no risky "technical waste" in the garden that can spread diseases and attract pests.
- If the bush is completely affected by the disease, it must be dug out with the roots and burned, and the place must be watered with potassium permanganate or treated with a fungicide.
- It is worth remembering that too many shoots on the bushes reduce the quality of the crop (the berry becomes smaller). If more than 8-10 stems have grown, they must be thinned out.
- To protect plants from early frosts, pruning dates can be postponed to the end of summer (mid-August).
- Some gardeners consider the autumn haircut to be risky, because it is at this time that the buds of future fruits are laid. However, if you cut off not the entire stalk, but only the leaf plate, the "growth points" are preserved. The optimum height of the cut stems (above the ground) should be at least 10 cm.
- When pruning garden strawberries in spring, in no case should fresh leaves be cut. The plant will begin to build up its green mass with all its might, but will no longer give ovaries. Thus, you can be left with no harvest at all.
Summing up
You can trim strawberries at different times: fall, spring, or summer. Each method has certain advantages, but not without its disadvantages.
The autumn procedure helps prepare the crop for winter and creates disease prevention.
If you adhere to the correct technique (cut off only the old and damaged leaf plate, without affecting the stems and healthy leaves), the planting yield will not suffer, but on the contrary, it will increase. In addition, at the end of August and the beginning of September, gardeners are not so busy, which allows them to come to grips with strawberries.