Anyone can grow strawberries for the New Year without leaving home

Experienced gardeners recommended only certain varieties

The summer season is over; until next summer we won’t have to weed the garden beds, mow the lawn or water the garden. But this does not mean that we now have to remain until summer without fresh herbs for the table or fragrant strawberries for Sunday tea. Moreover, for this it is not at all necessary to go to the supermarket for an expensive delicacy. Anyone, even a novice gardener, can grow it on their warm balcony.

Growing strawberries at home is not as difficult as it might seem at first glance, says our regular gardening expert Natalya Egorkina. According to her, the main thing is to choose the right variety and provide your plants with optimal light and temperature conditions in the room.

“Only remontant varieties are suitable for growing on a balcony or windowsill. To ripen berries at home, there is not enough natural light in winter in our climate, so you will have to get a phyto-lamp. There is a large selection of them in gardening stores, for every taste and budget. Choose a larger container for planting; there should also be normal air circulation in the room – that’s probably all that is needed for the growth of your plants. And of course, don’t forget to water and feed them regularly,” the expert advises.

By the way, it is not at all necessary to buy ready-made seedlings of remontant strawberries in a store or on the Internet for crazy money. You can sow the seeds yourself, but then the first berry will appear only in the summer, but there are easier ways. Many people, even in the fall, when they are preparing beds with strawberries for winter, cut off excess tendrils and plant them in pots, and with the onset of cold weather they bring them into the house. In this case, the rooted mustaches need to be transplanted into a larger pot.

But even if you didn’t take care of the seedlings in advance, it’s not scary. Go to the country, look for the whiskers, cut them off, and even if it’s already below zero outside and the beds are hidden under the snow, it doesn’t matter, strawberries very quickly come to life in the warmth and grow green mass. And for this to happen faster, your plants need to be invigorated and awakened; to do this, dilute succinic acid in water, it is sold in garden stores or pharmacies, the proportion is 2 grams. per liter of water. Then dip the aerial roots into the solution, but it is important not to immerse the core of the mustache in it.

In a week, the mustache will produce young roots, and you can start planting them. True, some gardeners advise that before transplanting strawberry mustaches from the garden into pots, first bury them in a small container and keep them for some time in a dark, cool room – a basement or garage. The strawberries should remain there at rest for two weeks, and then transplant them into a pot. It is not at all necessary to buy new containers; you can use ordinary technological pots, line the bottom with disposable kitchen towels, and then fill them with soil.

To make the root system grow faster, try powdering the roots with a special fertilizer for strawberries, and then sprinkle them with soil, immediately water it generously and be sure to treat it against pests and diseases.

Within a month, the strawberries will begin to gain color. So by the New Year you will have time to get your first harvest of fragrant strawberries grown at home.