What is wrong with these strawberries? Answer: The deformed fruit is likely caused by frost damage or poor pollination. More information about deformed strawberry fruit can be found in this issue’s article Factors may cause deformed strawberry fruit.
With the support of the Purdue Extension AgSeed Program, we are currently evaluating different production systems for growing strawberries in an open-field with plastic cultural systems for our area at Southwest Purdue Agricultural Center in Vincennes, IN. A day-neutral strawberry cultivar evaluation trial was established in the Spring of 2019. The evaluated cultivars include Portola, Evie-2, Mara Des Bois, Albion, Seascape, San Andreas, Monterey, and Tribute. Bare-root plants purchased from Nourse Farm and Indiana Berry were planted on black plastic mulch on Mar. 22. Cultivar Portola was planted on Apr. 10 due to back-order. Each of the eight cultivars were grown either with a retractable low tunnel system or without it (Figure 1). Although strawberries were planted this spring, most cultivars started to bloom toward the end of April. Removing runners started in early May. During the week of May 13, harvest started on the early cultivars: Tribute, Mara Des[Read More…]
Strawberries are primarily grown in the mattered row system in Indiana, in which bare-root strawberry plants are set in the spring, fruit is first harvested in the second year and plantings are renovated each year for a few seasons. Growers in southern Indiana have expressed interest in growing strawberries in the annual plasticultural system. With this annual system, plants are set in the fall and harvested in the spring of the following year. Plantings are not normally carried over a second year. Although the annual plasticultural system is very popular in the southern states, its usage is limited in Indiana mainly because our short fall weather conditions pose a challenge for strawberry plants to develop enough branch crowns, which allows them to achieve the optimal yield in the following spring. In the past two years, we have been testing the annual strawberry production system with additional protection from high tunnels[Read More…]
Although strawberry plants can be quite cold hardy, they need protection to survive the winter. In North Carolina, growers use floating row covers to protect strawberries in the winter. In Indiana, straw mulch is a more traditional way of winter protection for strawberries grown in a matted row system. After two relatively mild winters in 2015 and 2016, I heard successful stories about growing strawberries with the plasticulture system and using row covers for winter protection in Southern Indiana. Can the system also be successful in a colder winter, like the one that just passed? Our ongoing strawberry study will provide the answer. This article provides an update from this project comparing strawberries covered with straw mulch (about 4-inch thick) and row covers (two layers of 1.5-oz/yard2 row cover laid on wire hoops) this past winter (Figure 1). Temperature Between Dec. 27 to Jan. 6, we had the coldest nights[Read More…]
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