Strawberries are a very tasty and healthy berry. It contains many trace elements (phosphorus, magnesium, calcium), vitamins, folic acid. Unfortunately, her fruiting does not last long and in the remaining months you have to buy imported or greenhouse berries. Of course, berries grown on their own are the most delicious. How wonderful it would be if the berries grew on our balcony or windowsill!
It turns out that you can grow strawberries on the windowsill all year round. The main thing is to choose suitable varieties of strawberries and create the necessary conditions. Investments in this venture are minimal. You will need to buy several seedlings and soil mixture. So, at home?
Nothing prevents growing strawberries from seeds at home. This does not require much expense and effort. If winter is chosen as the season for harvesting, then you will need to provide artificial lighting. Fitolamps are well suited for this purpose, which today can be purchased at the same stores that sell pots and soil for planting.
The secret to getting a strawberry crop on the balcony is in the right choice of seed, which should be undemanding to growing conditions. Our tips will help you get guaranteed excellent results.
Varieties of strawberries for growing on a window at home
A common mistake is to buy varieties intended for greenhouses for growing strawberries from seeds at home. Only remontant varieties that are insensitive to daylight hours and temperature fluctuations in the apartment are suitable. Ampelous varieties that are sown in hanging containers and planters are also great.
In order to please the family with balcony strawberries all year round, you should pay attention to the following well-proven remontant varieties:
- Supreme- self-pollinating and high-yielding, fruiting period of 9 months, starting in May. For season 1 bush produces up to 2 kg of berries, each of which weighs about 40 g.
- Geneva- large-fruited spreading American variety. The berries have a mass of up to 50 g, cone-shaped with pronounced ribbing. It can grow in one place and bear fruit for 5 years.
- Queen Elizabeth II- a variation bred by the domestic breeder Mikhail Kachalkin. The variety is not sensitive to the length of daylight hours. Flowering with fruiting follow each other with an interval of 1 month from June to November. The berries are large (up to 50 g) very shiny.
- homemade delicacy- a hybrid ampel variety bred for hanging boxes. The peculiarity is the abundant formation of a large number of small, strawberry-like berries, very sweet and fragrant.
- Tristan- a very decorative ampelous hybrid with flowers not white, but raspberry. A compact bush gives shoots up to 1 m long, on which flowers bloom, and later grows up to 100 strongly elongated berries in a season.
- Selva- another American variety that produces up to 9 months a year berries of almost perfect shape weighing up to 80 g. I can plant pots and hanging boxes. Berries are distinguished by high density and keeping quality.
Growing conditions
In order for strawberries to bear fruit abundantly and continuously, it is necessary to pay close attention to growing conditions.
Lighting
Whatever strawberry is chosen for normal development and flowering, it needs a large amount of bright, sunlight. South-facing windows are best suited for placing plant boxes. On the north side, you will have to equip the backlight using fluorescent fluorescent lamps or special phyto-lamps based on LEDs. They can be purchased at special gardening stores.
Even when located on the south side in winter, strawberries still need to be illuminated. The total daylight hours should be at least 12 hours.
Temperature
The optimum temperature for growing strawberries is 23-25°C. At higher temperatures, pollination deteriorates significantly, and there are fewer berries. At a lower level, the risk of developing fungal, putrefactive diseases increases.
Humidity
Growing berries does not require high humidity. In most cases, plants adapt perfectly to the conditions of the room. Problems can arise when placing drawers near radiators or other heat sources. In this case, to increase the humidity, small containers of water are placed next to the strawberries.
The choice of containers for planting
You can grow strawberries on the windowsill in the apartment in any boxes or pots that are suitable in terms of volume. The choice of capacity for planting is limited by the size of the window. In most cases, it is convenient to use ordinary balcony boxes with a sufficient number of drainage holes. In their absence, constant stagnation of water will occur, harmful to the root system.
The minimum diameter of the pot in which strawberries can be planted is 25-30 cm.
The soil
The soil for growing strawberries should be:
- loose,
- moisture-intensive,
- nutritious.
For planting, choose humus soil, to which compost or peat and a small amount of sand are added. The correct reaction of the soil is neutral or slightly acidic (pH 5.5 - 6.5).
Strawberries do not like alkaline or acidic soils.
The soil can be made up of equal parts of humus, peat, leafy soil and pure river sand. If there is no possibility for self-compilation, you can purchase a ready-made industrial substrate based on universal peat. In terms of characteristics, it is almost identical to the soil mixture described above.
Before planting, you can mix the soil with the hydrogel. This will help keep the soil moist and protect the plants from water shortages.
Planting material preparation
Experienced gardeners recommend growing strawberries at home on the windowsill with seedlings, since growing seedlings from seeds on your own is a rather long and troublesome business. Planting material can be purchased at nurseries or taken from your site if you have remontant varieties.
Preparation of strawberry seedlings for planting at home is carried out as follows:
Naturally, it is most convenient to plant strawberry seedlings for growing indoors autumn(after you propagate it with a mustache in the summer).
- Of the available rooted sockets, you need to select only largest and healthiest.
- Planting material is separated from the mother plant and planted in a pot, and before that, all leaves are removed from them, except for 1-2 of the youngest.
- To provide strawberries with a dormant period, the container is placed for 14 days in a cool place,- basement or cellar.
Timing of emergence and harvest
The exact ripening time depends on the variety. The peculiarities of growing strawberries are that many factors influence the timing of flowering and the appearance of berries: the frequency of feeding, the length of daylight hours, and the temperature in the room.
Ideally, 2 months should pass from planting seedlings in a pot until the first berries appear.
Further, it all depends on the variety, because many bloom and bear fruit continuously, while others need a month to rest between fruiting. If you see that there are no flowers and berries on the plant, then it's time for rest. It is necessary to stop intensive watering and top dressing until the strawberries rest and resume vegetation.
How to care after planting and before harvest
Caring for strawberries on the windowsill consists of the following basic steps: watering, fertilizing, pruning, pollination and pest control (if the last two activities are necessary).
Watering
For watering strawberries, like other indoor plants, use only settled water at room temperature. In order not to wait until the chlorine settles to the bottom of the tank, water can be passed through a filter.
Advice! It will be very good if you regularly spray strawberry bushes with a spray bottle to increase the humidity in a dry room.
As a rule, it is enough to moisten the soil in containers with strawberries on the windowsill 2 times a week. It is best to moisten the soil in the afternoon. After watering, the soil in the planting container is loosened.
Important! Despite the fact that the growth of strawberries after the next moistening is activated, you should not get carried away with watering. Overwatering the plant is fraught with the appearance of rot on the roots and fungal diseases. Stagnant water is especially dangerous for bushes. However, the soil should not be allowed to dry out either.
top dressing
It is recommended to feed indoor strawberries 1 time in 2-3 weeks, after the 1st leaf appears on the bush. As a fertilizer, you can use the usual complex top dressing or special nutrient mixtures for strawberries. Top dressing is applied in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations (according to the instructions).
If you do not want to use mineral mixtures, dressing for room strawberries can be prepared independently, according to this recipe:
- A 3-liter jar is filled with crushed egg shells by a third.
- Then 1 glass of ash is poured and the jar is filled to the top with slightly warm water.
- At the end of 5 days of infusion, the solution is filtered.
- Before applying top dressing is diluted with water in a ratio of 1: 3.
You can fertilize strawberries on the windowsill with weak solutions mullein (1 to 10), chicken manure (1 to 20).
Note! It is impossible to overfeed strawberries with nitrogen fertilizers: a large amount of nutrients stimulates the active growth of leaves and has a bad effect on the setting and formation of fruits.
During fruiting, the bushes need a lot of iron, because. it is required for the formation of ovaries. According to experienced gardeners, in a folk way, in order to enrich the soil with this chemical element, you need to stick a rusty nail into the pot a few centimeters. Of course, the use of special purchased mixtures and preparations, which include iron, will be more modern, and they need to spray plantings 1-2 times a month.
Already after harvesting, the bushes are occasionally fed or not fed at all.
pruning
Many will be surprised, but strawberries need pruning, the purpose of which is to increase yields. How to prune strawberries grown at home on the windowsill?
- On seedlings grown from seeds, the first few flowers are plucked.
Important! But it is not necessary to cut off flower stalks on strawberries planted by seedlings.
- If further expansion of indoor plantings is not planned, and adult bushes do not need to be replaced, mustaches should be removed regularly. As a result of shearing, the plants will not be wasted on the formation of unnecessary rosettes, but will direct all the nutrients to the fruits.
Pollination at home strawberries in winter
Knowing how to grow strawberries on a balcony, one should not forget about its pollination. Under natural conditions, this is done by bees. And now you have to work instead of them.
We take a watercolor brush and gently brush the pile over the flowers, not forgetting any. If this is not done, then there will either be no berries at all, or they will be deformed and tasteless.
Sowing and harvesting dates
Strawberry seeds planted in an apartment germinate for a rather long time: the first seedlings make their way to the surface 20-30 days after sowing.
Remontant strawberries, planted by seedlings, grown at home on the windowsill, bloom at about 30-35 days, and ripe berries begin to be harvested after about 30-35 days. a couple of months after landing.
How to grow strawberries at home, video
Useful articles for the gardener:
Every second gardener or just a lover of domestic plants wants to grow not only a beautiful, but also a useful plant. And almost every housewife will not mind strawberries being such a culture. This is beautiful - a flowering plant emits a pleasant aroma, has a beautiful appearance, and you can.
The general concept of remontant strawberries
In order to enjoy delicious berries all year round, you need to know what types and varieties are required for reproduction. In detail about that, we already wrote earlier.
Homemade strawberries all year round is quite realistic if everything is organized correctly.
Experienced gardeners use for similar purposes exclusively remontant varieties , however, you should know which varieties are able to bear fruit continuously, and which ones only two crops.
Can you grow strawberries on a windowsill?
Remontant crops differ from the usual type not only in that they are able to bear fruit several times during the warm season, but also in the length of daylight hours. Ordinary crops, as a rule, are characterized by ripening with a short light day, that is, they ripen even at night, if the temperature regime allows.
Strawberries have bloomed on the windowsill, we are waiting for the first berries.
Differences in varieties
Remontant crops are divided into the maturation of long daylight hours and neutral daylight hours - DSD and NSD.
DSD repairers are able to develop and lay buds only in the presence of long-term illumination - produce twice a season . In this case, as a rule, the second crop is characterized by larger fruits and a higher overall level of yield. However, in this case, this species does not differ in particular endurance, as a result of which many bushes die after the season - they dry out.
NSD repairers are characterized by stronger endurance, fruiting is characterized by continuity, does not depend on the length of daylight hours. If favorable conditions are created, they are able to give a high level of yield for about ten months in a row. If grown at room temperature, with enough light provided, they are not affected by the weather and climate either.
Classification of varieties
If a decision is made to grow strawberries on a windowsill, you should ask the store what type the seedlings are, what they are called.
The main popular names of NSD remontants:
- Queen Elizabeth;
- Queen Elizabeth II;
- Roman F1;
- Tristar;
- Brighton.
Queen Elizabeth
It is believed that Queen Elizabeth refers to a type of long day of maturation, however, many gardeners still prefer to grow it in an apartment due to the large size of the berries and high taste..
The main advantages of the variety:
- large formation of whiskers for breeding;
- the size of the berries - 50 grams;
- beautiful flower stalks - a nice decor on the window;
- pleasant aroma;
- long-term storage in fresh and processed form.
In most cases, the first Elizabeth is grown in the house by those owners who are satisfied with such strawberry production period due to employment. The rest of the varieties are bright representatives of their species, they are distinguished by regular fruiting, pleasant aroma, beautiful flower stalks, and a high level of endurance.
Rules for planting strawberries at home
When choosing a variety, it should be borne in mind that the plant will live in the selected container for about three years, since it reduces immunity and productivity, lengthens the adaptation period.
In order not to replant strawberries once again, you need to immediately choose a larger pot.
In addition, adult seedlings may well die due to the fact that they are not able to adapt to new conditions as much as possible.
For one bush, you can use a container with a volume no more than three liters . The flowerpot should be wide and medium in height - at least twenty centimeters. You can use balcony boxes for group planting. Depending on the size of the box, the number of seedlings is calculated. If the approximate volume of the container is from ten to fifteen liters - four bushes, the distance between them is twenty-five centimeters.
Tank preparation
The container for seedlings must be properly prepared.
- At the bottom of the pot or box, holes should be cut to drain excess water, and the bottom of the tank should be filled with a drainage mixture - expanded clay, pebbles, broken bricks or pebbles.
- As a substrate, you can use a universal ready-made mixture from the store, which is used for indoor plants.
- But it is also permissible to use a self-prepared mixture - forest land, humus, humus, peat, sand .
- The dose is selected at the rate of two parts to one part.
Planting a seedling
top dressing
- It is recommended to feed approx. once every fourteen days .
- The frequency and amount of feeding will depend on the condition of the seedlings, stage of development, season.
It should be remembered that there is a so-called "dead period" when the plant is resting - it does not bloom, does not bear fruit, does not throw out stepchildren. At this time, all the functions of the culture freeze - the plant thus rests - do not apply any fertilizing and fertilizers . Can be used monofertilizer , or it can be a complex consisting of several substances.
Growing algorithm
Landing begins, as a rule, in July.
Around the second week after transplanting the seedlings, new leaves should appear.
This is due to the adaptation period - so that the seedlings can adapt to the winter, and already show the result in the spring. Planted in a voluminous pot, can be placed on the balcony, on the sunny side - on the south or southeast side of the balcony.
The appearance of the results - the first additional leaves - is expected on eleventh day . If young leaves appeared, the plant is firmly rooted and taken root. At the same time, the old leaves gradually die off and crumble. On the thirtieth day, the first buds of peduncles can be expected, which should be removed in order for the second flowering to bring better results.
flower stalks
Around the thirty-seventh day - flower stalks open.
On bushes planted more than a month ago, the first flowers appear.
First, there are several disclosures - approximately two to four inflorescences . The duration of flowering varies within three days, then the petals fall off and the first fruits are tied.
The conditional end of flowering, if the strawberry belongs to the period of long daylight hours of ripening, occurs approximately on the fifty-second day after planting.
We help the flowers to pollinate.
First berries
At the same time, the first berries increased in size, and the peduncles bloom and fade in turn.
It is necessary to monitor the stems due to the fact that the first berries are extremely large - the stems can break.
To prevent this phenomenon, you can put a cloth roller or foam rubber under the stems. And you should also remember about systematic watering as needed. The first sample of ripe berries usually occurs on the sixty-first day, if all measures of proper agricultural technology are followed.
Deformed berries appear with insufficient pollination of peduncles.
Fruiting all year round
For winter fruiting, strawberries need additional illumination, as a result of which the length of the day will increase to approximately twelve hours.
Additional lighting for homemade strawberries.
The temperature regime is maintained at the level twenty degrees Celsius . If the DSD variety is used for indoor cultivation, it is worth remembering that the duration of the active productivity of this species is two or three years.
If a decision is made to grow NSD remontants, one must be prepared for the fact that a decline in productivity may occur in a year, and then it will be necessary to carry out new planting and breeding of young seedlings.
Video on how to plant strawberries from seeds at home
Fresh strawberries on the table out of season are the dream of every housewife and gardener. And who would not want to taste delicious and fragrant berries on a cold, gray winter weekdays? In order to have strawberries on the windowsill all year round, it will take a little effort and a good remontant variety of berries.
What is remontant strawberry
Before you start growing strawberries on the windowsill, you need to understand the varieties suitable for this purpose. It is worth giving preference to unpretentious, shade-tolerant, productive and tasty types of strawberries, because the cold season implies a short daylight hours.
A distinctive feature of remontant varieties is that they are able to bear fruit and form inflorescences regardless of the season, it is important for them to have fertile soil and a suitable temperature regime.
The culture is classified according to several criteria, one of them is the formation of buds:
When choosing a variety for indoor cultivation, you should pay attention to this and choose seeds marked NSD, then you can enjoy berries all year round.
In addition to these differences, the culture is divided into mustachioed and beardless. Each type is good in its own way, but has its pros and cons.
mustachioed culture
For growing strawberries on the windowsill in winter, ampelous varieties are suitable. They not only bear fruit well, they look original - it is convenient to harvest from them, and it is also profitable to grow them on the balcony in ordinary flower pots, simply by hanging them from the ceiling or wall.
According to the reviews of experienced gardeners, we can conclude that that the following varieties proved to be the best in indoor cultivation:
The list can be continued indefinitely, because the breeders have tried and created a huge number of plants with good yields and taste. In the listed rating, there are better varieties marked by domestic gardeners and amateurs.
Even if you are not a summer gardener, but a simple lover of indoor plants, then you will probably also be interested in the article "Strawberries on the windowsill in 60 days."
What is remontant strawberry
To grow strawberries at home, you need special repair varieties. The remontant strawberry differs from the usual one in that it bears fruit not once a year, but during the season it can bring 2 or more crops. But she also makes demands that correspond to her need for high-quality fertile soil and frequent watering.
In addition, it is divided into two groups:
- One group of remontant strawberries lays flower buds only with a long daylight hours, such a group is abbreviated as DSD.
- The second group is able to lay the kidneys with a neutral light day, it is abbreviated as NSD.
DSD varieties produce 2 harvests per year in July and August-September. At the same time, the second crop is almost twice as large as the first, its share is 60-90% of the total weight. Unfortunately, not all bushes can endure such a load, many die after harvesting.
NSD varieties bear fruit almost continuously for most of the year up to 10 months. Moreover, their fruiting is not particularly affected by weather conditions, time of year and day, which is why they are called neutral-day varieties.
It is these NSD strawberry varieties that are most suitable for growing at home. Therefore, when buying, ask the seller which group this or that variety belongs to.
Varieties of remontant strawberries
To date, breeders, both here and abroad, have bred a huge number of varieties of this berry. I will list you a few, perhaps the most popular.
Types of DSD:
- autumn fun
- Garland
- Crimean remontant
- Inexhaustible, etc.
Types of NSD:
- Queen Elizabeth
- Queen Elizabeth II
- Roman F1
- Tristar
- Brighton etc.
Each of these varieties has its own advantages and disadvantages, and any of them can bring a good harvest. But "Queen Elizabeth II" surpasses all others in terms of yield and size of berries.
It is better to buy strawberry seedlings (and they can also be called strawberries) in a specialized store, and not from people in the market. It will cost a little more, but you can be sure of the name of the variety and the quality of planting material.
Pay attention to the "development" of the seedlings, the bushes should have 3-5 healthy green leaves and preferably a large bud (heart).