How to distinguish female and male strawberry bushes?
Gardeners should be familiar with this situation: newly planted young strawberries, seemingly healthy and strong, without any signs of diseases and insect parasites, bear poor fruit, and the quantity and quality of the berries do not fit the description of the planted variety. No need to rush to blame yourself and the supplier for the purchase of a fake. Perhaps the site just has too many male plants. But not everyone knows how to distinguish them from the female bushes.
Differences between "boys" and "girls"
If you look at the strawberry planting more closely, you will notice that some bushes look a bit more powerful and healthier than the neighboring ones. And they have brighter green foliage, and they throw out a lot of tendrils, only one problem - the berries cannot be seen on them! Apparently, they consider, like real men, that to bear fruit is a primordially female duty, and they have no business to do this before but to conquer the occupied part of the garden bed.
At the stage of blooming flowers and fruit set it is easy to distinguish between "boys" and "girls". Male flowers are larger, they have more stamens, and after flowering, there is no ovary of the future berry on the peduncle.
But how to do it when planting young seedlings purchased in a store or grown independently is a question.
Carefully inspect the heart of the rosette of your seedling - if its shape is elongated in the shape of a cone, and the diameter is less than 4 mm, then it is likely that this is a boy and you will probably not try the berries. But if it is slightly flattened and has a larger radius, then the chances that it is a female bush increase greatly. Of course, nobody will give you a 100% guarantee, but 70-80% is not bad either.
By the way, there is a growing popularity among gardeners, gardeners, the so-called garden strawberry oboepola. It always bears fruit, which is the main reason for its wide distribution.
Reasons and goals
The reason for the necessity of determining the sex of strawberry bushes is one, and it is quite simple - strawberries are grown for its sweet, fragrant berries, and not as a decorative ornament of the vegetable garden. And if you do not want to stay with emerald green, but useless beds, learn to distinguish between "boys" and "girls." This ability can be very useful when buying new seedlings in a nursery or specialty store.
As you, of course, know, in the 2-3rd years of the bush’s life it begins to produce “babies” - its root system expands, forming new sockets. They can be both masculine and feminine.
The ability to distinguish them will help you out here too, so that when breeding strawberry plants by dividing the maternal bush, do not populate the new place with wilderness boys.
With early finding and destruction of male dellenok, the fertility of the uterus increases, because the remaining girl bushes will now get more macro and microelements from the soil. Yes, and thinned foliage will receive more sunlight, resulting in improved photosynthesis of proteins. It turns out that one of the methods of proper care for strawberry planting is regular osmatr of plants in order to divide the new budding into “boys” and “girls”.
Of course, the complete destruction of male bushes should not be done, it is even harmful, since they are charged with the task of pollinating the flowers of female individuals. We must learn to observe a certain balance between them. On average, one "man" pollinates about 10 "women." So that Try to stick to exactly this proportion - 1:10. And remove extra boys to improve the fertility of the remaining plants.
How to delete
Carefully unscrew the male delenka from the ground so as not to damage the rhizomes of the remaining part of the bush. Pour the hole that appeared to the soil to the level of the beds. If the number of “boys” is much higher than the number of “girls” in the mother bush, after the division of the family, some summer residents advise trying to “aim” men at fruiting.To do this, they are deposited in a separate test fit, while applying a compacted layout layout, where the distance between seedlings is only 1 decimeter. Trim all mustaches thrown out by bushes - this is very important. Only in the case of the uniqueness of the strawberry variety can you leave a pair of first tendrils for subsequent breeding.
By the end of the season, the “boys” in the artificially cramped cram think out to grow their mustaches and switch to laying the peduncles. Now they can be transferred to a permanent place of deployment.
By transplanting the former "boys" in early autumn, you will provide them with good chances of good engraftment before the winter cold. In the next season they will form real flower stalks, which later will delight you with fruits.
How to distinguish female from male mustache
If you are already buying adult seedlings, do not take bushes with a powerful, strong mustache. In 95% of cases, you will get barren men. Females emit antennae after fruiting. There are not so many of them, they are thinner, but from them you are guaranteed to replenish the female population in your garden.
When breeding female bushes with a mustache, some summer residents advise landing a mustache not far from each other (3-5 cm distance). They justify this by saying that a bush is likely to form this way, and if one of the antennae does not take root, it is easier to separate it from the rest.
According to experts, the first (maximum, second) socket on the whiskers is almost always female. She has the most favorable conditions for the overall development and bookmark flower buds. In addition, taking root in the vicinity of the mother bush, these children are experiencing "pressure" from both "mother" and "little brothers". Starting from the third, the following sockets go out from under the canopy of the mother plant and begin to behave completely differently. The sun, air, free land around becomes a lot, and the plant “remembers” it, programming itself for breeding with whiskers, and not with seeds, like older sisters.
Maintain the ratio of female and male strawberries in your backyard, do not forget about proper care for them - and you will be satisfied with the quantity and quality of the harvest from your beds!
For more information on how to distinguish a male bush from a female, see below.
