My Strawberry Experience

Four years into Horticulture and it made sense to rotate the crop from carnations to something else ……

Chrysanthemums was one option but Strawberry caught my fancy.

Internet searches suggested that yield in Polyhouse should be higher, earlier and round the year. Also the capital investment is lower.

Well, here is my first hand experience at my Talegaon farm.

I imported chandelar and sweet charley varieties from California along with the Mahabaleshwar gang

The first problem I faced was the delay in supply, July instead of April ! This meant I did not have enough time to propagate and plant my one acre by mid September. Then the next challenge as the imported plants just started to die ! 184 survived of the 1900 imported. Huge losses! Many suggestions came through, I should have planted them in coco peat first, that the water was inadequate , I did not use correct fungiside, I did not prune the roots at planting…

Well, a bit of all but it was all too late by now.

Round two , I decided to go back to plan B which was to buy fruit plants directly. I did around 15th september. They were soil rooted cuttings in bags  and we  transplanted them straight on to beds . They flourished . Bingo first success !

Now the runners started and the foliage. It looked promising at first but then I realised a little late that all this vegetative growth is going to delay the flowering. Introduced Levocin sprays.

They were well tolerated and flowering was initiated . The first flush was huge in size and quantity.

Now the next challenge, infections, caterpillar and fungus!!

Too much foliage allowed a cool hiding place for caterpillar and mulching meant the sheets remained wet after sprays allowing fungus to grow.

Desperate search on internet suggested captaf and quintal sprays once a week from the time of flowering. No one had said this and guess I had not bothered to read up. Another lesson. The rates were brilliant and we made good sales.

Mid November the infamous Phyan struck. The green house paper tore away and the weather remained miserable for 3 days. That destroyed more than 50% of my first flush.

Well, well so much for first year in strawberry.

Lessons learnt

1) Better to buy plants rooted  in soil.

2) Trying to make your own plants in first year is too risky.

3) Plantation of fruit plants in early September essential to get the harvest time right.

4) Livosin sprays necessary to stop excessive vegetation in polyhouse plantation.

5) Antifungal sprays at flowering equally important.

6) Mulching was a big mistake, manual deweeding is the best.

Wish I had found some one else’s blog sharing their experience & I would have come out a winner the very first year. Never say die , there will always be the next year.