Small-fruited remontant strawberry
The repair form of strawberry smallfruit , first found in the Alps( that is why it is also called the Alpine), was known in culture in Italy in the 16th century, and in England and France from the XVIII century. In recent years, it began to be widely cultivated in Europe and the United States.
This strawberry is botanically related to wild strawberry. Small-fruited remontant strawberries have two varieties. The first species( Fr. vesca eflagellis scmperflorens) does not form whiskers. It is propagated only by seeds and by dividing the bush. The absence of a mustache makes it possible to use this variety for decorative purposes - the design of tracks and cottages.
It is convenient to look after it because it does not form a mustache. White flowers and red berries make the plant decorative. It can be grown not only in the garden, but also in boxes and flowerpots on the balconies or in the apartment on the window.
Another variety of small-fruited remontant strawberries( Fr. vesca var. Semperflorens parvicarpa) does not differ in form and taste from the first, but forms a mustache. The abundance of thin mustache makes it difficult to care for plants, so these varieties are not widely used.
The fossil small-fruited, remontant strawberry is also known to gardeners, also called the monthly one. The bush is tall and thick-leafed. The leaves are light green, small, delicate, like the leaves of ordinary forest strawberries. Leaf slice thin. The flower bud is level or above the leaves. Pedicels in inflorescence are long, thin. The flowers are small, bisexual. According to the taste and form of the berries do not differ from the usual forest strawberries, they have a very close chemical composition and have the same medicinal properties, but they are 1.5-3 times larger. This strawberry perfectly conveys all the properties when multiplying by seeds, resumes self-sowing, and the absence of a mustache reduces the care of plantings to a minimum. In addition, this strawberry is most resistant to pests and diseases.
Small-fruited remontant strawberries bear fruit from the middle of summer( end of June) until late autumn. Since their continuous fruiting lasts until frost, the total yield per season with a denser planting yields little to the yield of large-fruited forms and reaches, under favorable conditions of the year, good agrotechnics, even in non-Black Earth conditions, 300 g from the plant.
Shrub of small-fruited remontant strawberry
The most common varieties are Baron Solemaher, Weise Solemacher, Rhine de Vale, Angal Beauty, Quarte Satsons, Gabicuels, Fragole, Rampicanti, Bianca( yellow-fruited).
It is believed that small-fruited strawberries are very unpretentious, almost maintenance-free, drought-resistant. However, if we adhere to the agrotechnics, which we recommend for large-fruited garden strawberries, it significantly increases the yield by enlarging the berries, sometimes even 1.5-2 times.
Small-fruited remontant strawberries are less winter hardy than usual. But under the snow cover about 30 cm the plants winter well. Often, after wintering, the bushes have the appearance of dead, but one should not rush to remove them. In warm weather, they grow well from the rhizome and give a full yield. And using film shelters at the beginning of April, you can get berries for a couple of weeks or two before, and they will be ripening richer. The productive life of strawberries is 2-3 years, but later its productivity drops sharply.
Small-fruited strawberries are propagated by seeds and by dividing the bush.
Propagation by seeds. Seeds for sowing should be taken from the most productive plants and from the largest and most mature berries. For best results, the seeds should be taken, not the first early berries, but the berries of subsequent collections - in August. Since in most cases, sowing is uncomfortable in autumn, then after harvesting the seeds are stored until spring sowing.
To get good seedlings for the spring planting in the Non-Black Earth region, the seeds are best sowed in early March.
To make seeds, wild strawberries are made with boxes measuring 30 cm by 40 cm and height of 8 cm. The earth is prepared with the following composition: 1 part of turf ground,
K part of peat, 0.2 parts of river sand, 0.2 manure( humus).You can take and highly fertile soil in a mixture with peat and sand in a ratio of 1: 1: 1.
The box must be filled with substrate, leveled, compacted, poured with water. Seeds of remontant strawberries are small, like semolina, and they can not be buried in the soil. The seeds are spread evenly over the leveled soil surface, and then they are poured over the sieve through the sieve by about 1 mm. The box is covered with a glass or a film. Before the emergence of the plant it is possible to keep it in a dark but warm place. When watering the seeds, only sprinkle water.
Seedlings( two green cotyledons) appear on the 10-30 day. When they appear, the box is placed on a light window. One week after emergence, the first real wrinkled with characteristic denticles appears.
When 2-3 leaflets grow( excluding cotyledons), plants are planted in pots or other containers using the same substrate composition. Only at the bottom of them for drainage pour large-grained sand or expanded clay, broken brick 2-3 cm layer, and top soil mixture 10-15 cm layer. 2-3 days before planting seedlings should be disinfected: shed light with a hot solution of potassium permanganate.
In the open ground seedlings are planted at the end of May. The soil is prepared in advance as an ordinary garden strawberry. You can grow radish, onion on a feather before strawberries. The first harvest from these plants will be in early August.
It is possible to sow in summer, even in open ground. True, in summer planting, strawberry plants bear fruit for the following year, after wintering in the garden.
Multiplication by bush dividing. Two-three-year-old shrubs of small-fruited strawberries have a branched rhizome, which is divided into parts. The bush is excavated from the ground and divided by a sharp knife into as many parts as there are rhizomes from separate bushes. When dividing an old bush, the roots of the specimens obtained from its separation are often too long;then the roots are shortened to approximately 5 cm. The old plant shrubs, which have been cleared from old leaves, leaf sheaths and stems, are planted into a new place, after having prepared it for a large-fruited garden strawberry. It is best to divide the old strawberry bushes in the spring( and not in autumn), then the young plants have time to take root properly before the winter. In general, reproduction by dividing old shrubs still does not give such strong plants as reproduction by sexual means, i.e.by sowing seeds, although this method requires a little more time and labor to obtain fruit-bearing plants.