Using weed cover material to grow strawberries

Covering material for strawberries from weeds is invariably popular among gardeners. This type of mulching, or surface coating of the soil with a material, not only protects the soil, but also significantly improves its quality indicators. Mulching is currently one of the most effective methods of agricultural technology in the cultivation of garden crops.

Characteristic and purpose

Mulching has become widespread in the practice of foreign gardening for a long time. In our country, this agrotechnical technique using inorganic materials has become especially popular in the last few years. Mulch helps to accelerate the onset of berry ripening by 7-10 days compared to uncovered soil. Most often, film and agrofibre are used to organize inorganic mulching. Such a production operation, which is quite successfully used in horticulture and crop production, has a large number of advantages.

Advantages of agriculture:

• moisture preservation in the soil;
• reduction in the number of weeds;
• prevention of soil overheating in summer and soil freezing in winter;
• preventing the ingress of spray, which contains pathogens and pathogens, from the soil to plants and berries during irrigation and in rains;
• prevention of erosive soil changes;
• preventing the formation of soil crust and improving the absorption of water into the soil;
• preservation of optimal indicators of soil looseness;
• the formation in plants of a more powerful and developed root system.

Strawberry: planting in non-woven cover material

Disadvantages of technology:

• relatively high cost of mulching material;
• the need to use a drip irrigation system for garden crops;
• mulching black material often causes overheating of plants in the summer.

Varieties of film material

Currently, the covering material is represented by several varieties. Most often, inorganic mulching accompanies the cultivation of garden strawberries for several seasons. However, direct planting of the berry culture on film or agrofiber is also quite popular.

Varieties of Non-Woven Covering Material

Separately, it is worth mentioning such a most modern material, which allows sheltering strawberry bushes from weeds, such as non-woven fiber. Such materials perfectly allow air and moisture to pass through, which allows the berry bushes to "breathe", but at the same time perform a protective function against low temperatures at night. It is especially common to cover berry crops with such mulching material in recent years. The covering material used in home gardening and industrial gardening from weeds is sold on the markets of our country under various names.

When choosing, you should remember that spanbond is most often sold under such brands as Agrospan-60, Agril-60, Lumiteks-60 and Lutrasil-60. In addition, materials of this type are divided into light, medium, dense white and dense black.

Features of choice

The mulching version of agrofibre is a non-woven polypropylene material, the density of which cannot be less than 50-60 g for each square meter of covering area. When growing garden strawberries, mulching is best done with black agrofibre with a density of 60 g / m2. The standard life of such material is at least three seasons. When choosing, you need to pay attention to such a parameter as the width of the agrofibre. The most popular material with a width of 1.6 and 3.2 m.

It is also important to remember that Chinese-made polyethylene has a declared service life of three years, but in practice such a mulch can withstand only one season. It is desirable that the thickness indicators of the selected mulching polyethylene were not less than 40-50 microns. Special films with holes already prepared for landing are convenient to use, but short-lived. If polyethylene is used as mulch, then watering the berry culture is carried out through a drip irrigation system.

The popularity of three- or two-layer black and white polyethylene mulching films is due to the high degree of reflection of sunlight by weak heating of the soil in the daytime. Weed growth and mold formation under the lower layer are also prevented. It should be remembered that black and white films are laid with the black side to the soil, and not vice versa.

Use technology

Features of the use of mulching inorganic material when growing garden strawberries are in strict adherence to technology:

• digging and applying to the soil the fertilizers necessary for the full growth and development of the berry culture in order to increase soil fertility;
• sheltering ridges with mulching material, the edges of which need to be dug a little or attached to the ground with special studs;
• teething in the material of the cross-shaped holes according to the scheme of growing garden strawberries;
• wrapping the edges formed by cutting the mulching material inward.

Types of covering materials

At the final stage, strawberry bushes are planted in the prepared holes. Further care is standard, but labor costs when grown in this way will be significantly reduced.