There are two ways to plant strawberries in your garden: sow seeds or plant seedlings. Strawberry seeds can be sown for seedlings from mid-winter to mid-March. Containers with sown seeds can be kept in a dark place, at a temperature of +18 ° C until germination. Strawberry seedlings need a sufficient amount of light, in the winter months they need to be illuminated.
Strawberry seeds can also be sown in open ground, in summer, then you will get the first harvest next year.
How to grow strawberries from seeds, we will consider in this article.
Where to sow strawberry seeds
For sowing seeds, not deep containers are used – up to 7 cm. Strawberry seeds are very small, they are planted in a superficial way (without deepening into the soil, only lightly sprinkled with earth). Boxes with sown seeds are watered abundantly, with a sprayer, covered with a film or glass. How to make a mini greenhouse from scrap materials?
How to prepare the soil for seeds?
In order for strawberry seeds to germinate, you need to prepare the soil. The composition of the soil should include: peat, deciduous soil, sand (2:2:1). If you use soil from the garden, it must be disinfected. Why? There are many different microorganisms in the ground, eggs and insect larvae, weed seeds, fungal spores, therefore, in order to get rid of them, the prepared soil must be disinfected (freeze, calcined in the oven for 30 minutes, steam over a saucepan for 30 minutes).
Germination and sowing of seeds
Strawberry seeds germinate for a very long time, for the pain of quick and uniform germination, the seeds are germinated. Pre-germination allows you to control seed germination. They are soaked for 2-3 days. Swollen seeds are laid out in a thin layer on moistened cotton wool or gauze placed on a saucer, and placed in a warm, bright place. Be careful not to dry out the seeds. As soon as the seeds hatch (“white tails” appear), we take each seed with a match or tweezers and plant it in a box filled with loose sifted soil.
Read also our article “Sowing seeds for seedlings”
The first shoots should appear within two weeks. After the appearance of strawberry cotyledons, climatic conditions are changed to them: remove the film; keep in a cool place (+15 – +17° C ). Strawberry seedlings are very sensitive, both to drying out and to waterlogging of the soil. So, you should be very careful with watering crops.
Crop care
Strawberry seedlings need a lot of light. If you grow seedlings indoors, do not forget that the higher the temperature, the more light there should be. Watering should be moderate, regular so that the topsoil does not dry out (water from a spray bottle, or pour water into a plate).
The next step is to dive the seedlings. Picking is carried out after the plant has 2 – 3 true leaves. We dive the plants into pots measuring 5×5 cm or into boxes at a distance of 5 cm from each other.
Planting strawberry seedlings in open ground
Strawberries should be planted no earlier than June. Before that, the plants need to be hardened: pots with seedlings are placed in the open air in the shade, gradually accustoming them to the sun. Every day we increase the hardening time, and after 5-7 days we plant it on a prepared bed. A sunny place is allocated for the berry, and planted in such a way that the distance between the bushes is at least 30 cm.
How to plant strawberries in the garden, read the article “When to plant strawberries”
