Strawberries are a very tasty and healthy berry. It contains many microelements (phosphorus, magnesium, calcium), vitamins, folic acid. Unfortunately, its fruiting does not last long and in the remaining months you have to buy imported or greenhouse berries. Of course, berries grown independently are the most delicious. How wonderful it would be if berries grew on our balcony or windowsill!
It turns out that you can grow strawberries on your 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, how to grow strawberries at home?
Is it possible to grow strawberries on a windowsill and balcony?
Nothing prevents you from growing strawberries from seeds at home. This will not require much expense and effort. If winter is chosen as the harvest season, you will need to provide artificial lighting. Phytolamps are well suited for this purpose, which today can be purchased in the same stores that sell pots and soil for planting.
The secret to getting a strawberry harvest on the balcony is in the right choice of seed, which should be undemanding to growing conditions. Our tips will help you get a guaranteed excellent result.
Substrate selection
This aspect deserves special attention. You can buy a soil mixture for planting strawberries at home in a store or prepare it yourself. For indoor growing of berries, any substrate for flowers and vegetables is quite suitable. If you want to prepare the soil yourself, then you need to mix sand, pine soil and humus in equal quantities in one container. Strawberries will grow well in a substrate of vermicompost and peat.
The main condition that must be observed for growing strawberries is that the soil mixture should be slightly moist and airy. Phosphorus fertilizers should also be added to the substrate. It is highly undesirable to use garden soil for planting strawberry seedlings. It may be infected with nematodes and other pests. If there are no other options, then before using the soil, be sure to treat it with a solution of potassium permanganate. After such disinfection, plants can be planted in the soil only after a week.
Strawberry varieties for growing on a window at home
A common mistake is to buy varieties intended for greenhouses to grow strawberries from seeds at home. Only remontant varieties that are insensitive to daylight hours and temperature fluctuations in the apartment are suitable. Hanging varieties that are sown in hanging containers and flowerpots are also perfect.
To please your family with balcony strawberries all year round, you should pay attention to the following well-proven remontant varieties:
- Supreme is self-pollinating and high-yielding, the fruiting period is 9 months, starting in May. During the season, 1 bush produces up to 2 kg of berries, each of which weighs about 40 g.
- Geneva is a large-fruited, spreading American variety. The berries weigh up to 50 g, are cone-shaped with pronounced ribbing. It can grow in one place and bear fruit for 5 years.
- Queen Elizabeth II is a variation bred by domestic breeder Mikhail Kachalkin. The variety is not sensitive to daylight hours. Flowering and fruiting occur one after another with an interval of 1 month from June to November. The berries are large (up to 50 g) and very shiny.
- A homemade delicacy - a hybrid ampelous variety bred for hanging boxes. The peculiarity is the abundant formation of a large number of small, strawberry-like berries, very sweet and aromatic.
- Tristan is a very decorative ampelous hybrid that has flowers not white, but crimson. The compact bush produces shoots up to 1 m long, on which flowers bloom, and later grows up to 100 highly elongated berries per season.
- Selva is another American variety that produces almost ideally shaped berries weighing up to 80 g for up to 9 months a year. You can plant them in pots and hanging boxes. The berries are distinguished by their 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 the 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 boxes with plants. On the north side you will have to install lighting using fluorescent fluorescent lamps or special LED-based phyto-lamps. They can be purchased at special gardening stores.
Even if 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 optimal temperature for growing strawberries is 23-25°. At higher temperatures, pollination deteriorates significantly and there are fewer berries. If it is lower, the risk of developing fungal and putrefactive diseases increases.
Humidity
Growing berries does not require high humidity. In most cases, plants adapt well to room conditions. Problems may arise when placing boxes near radiators or other heat sources. In this case, to increase humidity, small containers of water are placed next to the strawberries.
Selection of containers for planting
You can grow strawberries on a windowsill in an apartment in any boxes or pots of suitable size. The choice of container 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 with added compost or peat and a small amount of sand. The correct soil reaction is neutral or slightly acidic (pH 5.5 - 6.5).
Strawberries do not like alkaline or acidic soils.
The soil can be composed of equal parts of humus, peat, leaf soil and clean river sand. If it is not possible to compile it yourself, you can purchase a ready-made industrial substrate based on universal-purpose peat. Its characteristics are almost identical to the soil mixture described above.
Before planting, you can mix the soil with hydrogel. This will help maintain constant soil moisture and protect plants from water shortages.
Pollination
Pollination will have to be done manually using a delicate brush or feather. You can pollinate by ventilation by directing a stream of air with a fan.
Pollination with a brush
Winter growing on a windowsill does not make commercial sense. But how nice it is to pick a red ripe berry when there is snow outside the window or a blizzard is blowing. It's certainly worth a try.
Preparation of planting material
Experienced gardeners recommend growing strawberries at home on a windowsill with seedlings, since growing seedlings from seeds yourself is quite a long and troublesome task. Planting material can be purchased at nurseries or taken from your own plot if you have remontant varieties growing.
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 in the fall (after you propagate it using the mustache in the summer).
- From the available rooted rosettes, only the largest and healthiest ones should be selected.
- Planting material is separated from the mother plant and planted in a pot, and first all leaves are removed from them, except for 1-2 of the youngest.
- To provide the strawberries with a period of rest, place the container for 14 days in a cool place - a basement or cellar.
What soil should I plant in?
On the windowsill, berries can be planted in several soil options. For example, special soil mixtures are sold in specialty stores. Strawberries in pots can be grown using such mixtures without fear - they are universal and suitable for any variety.
The composition of the soil is not the main condition when choosing it. It must meet requirements such as looseness, air permeability and moderate humidity. If the mixture is prepared manually, then it is important not to forget to add fertilizers containing potassium and phosphorus to the soil after finishing the work.
Many people mistakenly use garden soil for planting berries in urban areas. This approach is undesirable, since the soil can be contaminated with various infections. If there is no other option for extracting soil, then before planting it on the windowsill it should be disinfected using a weak manganese solution. Planting strawberries is allowed 7 days after the soil disinfection procedure.
Timing of germination and harvesting
The exact ripening time depends on the variety. The peculiarities of growing strawberries are that the timing of flowering and appearance of berries is influenced by many factors: frequency of fertilizing, length of daylight hours, room temperature.
Ideally, 2 months should pass from planting the seedlings in the pot until the first berries appear.
Then it all depends on the variety, because many bloom and bear fruit continuously, while others require a month to rest between fruitings. If you see that there are no flowers or berries on the plant, then it’s time for rest. It is necessary to stop intensive watering and fertilizing until the strawberries have rested and resumed their growing season.
Sowing seeds
The method is labor-intensive, since you will need to first prepare the seeds for planting (germination, stratification), and pick the seedlings. But there are advantages:
- financial savings (a package of seeds is cheaper than ready-made seedlings);
- seedlings are adapted to specific conditions and suffer less illness;
- the possibility of obtaining seedlings of the variety or hybrid you like, while when purchasing from a nursery you have to be content with the assortment offered.
The approximate time for the start of fruiting is 4-6 months from the moment the first shoots appear. But the exact timing is determined by the characteristics of the variety and the correctness of agricultural technology.
It is best to sow strawberries at the end of January and February. To do this, containers are used, nutrient soil is prepared in advance, and seeds are stratified (about 3-4 weeks before the expected sowing period).
How to care after planting and before harvesting
Caring for strawberries on the windowsill consists of the following basic actions: watering, fertilizing, pruning, pollination and pest control (if the last two measures are necessary).
Watering
To water strawberries, like other indoor plants, use only settled water at room temperature. In order not to wait for the chlorine to settle to the bottom of the container, the water can be passed through a filter.
Advice! It will be very good if you regularly spray your 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 is activated after the next moistening, 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 once every 2-3 weeks, after the first leaf appears on the bush. As a fertilizer, you can use regular complex fertilizers or special nutrient mixtures for strawberries. Fertilizers are applied in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations (according to the instructions).
If you do not want to use mineral mixtures, you can prepare fertilizer for indoor strawberries yourself, according to this recipe:
- A third of a 3-liter jar is filled with crushed eggshells.
- Then add 1 cup of ash and fill the jar to the top with slightly warm water.
- At the end of 5 days of infusion, the solution is filtered.
- Before application, the fertilizer is diluted with water in a ratio of 1:3.
You can also fertilize strawberries on the windowsill with weak solutions of mullein (1 to 10), chicken droppings (1 to 20).
Note! You cannot overfeed strawberries with nitrogen fertilizers: a large amount of nutrients stimulates active leaf growth and has a bad effect on fruit set and formation.
During fruiting, bushes need a large amount of iron, because... it is required for the formation of ovaries. According to experienced gardeners, the folk method is to enrich the soil with this chemical element by driving a rusty nail several centimeters into the pot. Of course, it would be more modern to use special purchased mixtures and preparations that contain iron; they should be used to spray the plantings 1-2 times a month.
After harvesting, the bushes are fed occasionally or not at all.
Trimming
Many will be surprised, but strawberries need pruning, the purpose of which is to increase yield. How to prune strawberries grown at home on a windowsill?
- On seedlings grown from seeds, the first few flowers are plucked.
Important! But there is no need to pick off flower stalks on strawberries planted as seedlings.
- If further expansion of indoor plantings is not planned, and there is no need to replace adult bushes, it is necessary to regularly remove the tendrils. As a result of pruning, the plants will not be wasted on the formation of unnecessary rosettes, but will direct all the nutrients to the fruits.
Pollination of strawberries at home in winter
Knowing how to grow strawberries on the balcony, we must not forget about pollination. Under natural conditions, bees do this. And now you will have to work instead of them.
Take a watercolor brush and carefully brush the bristles 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.
Planting ready-made seedlings
If you don’t want to bother with seeds, it is recommended to purchase ready-made seedlings. After purchase, strawberries in pots are carefully replanted by transferring them into prepared containers with soil and placed in a bright and warm place.
Saplings with bare roots are first prepared for planting by soaking in any growth stimulant (Kornevin, Epin), and only then planted in containers. The crop begins to bloom and bear fruit after about 2-3 months.
Helpful advice! When planting, do not bury the root collar.
