Here are a few tips to help you\u00a0get your strawberry plants well established ahead of cooler winter temperatures.<\/p>\n
To start with I would have a crew walk the field to make sure that transplants are in the ground properly.\u00a0 This means making sure that plugs are making good soil contact.\u00a0 Check to see that the\u00a0crowns are just at the soil surface and that no plastic is in between the root ball and the soil.\u00a0 Another thing to look out for when you have two drip lines is to make sure the plants are not directly on top of the lines.\u00a0 This can cause the plants to be heaved out of the soil when the irrigation is turned on.<\/p>\n
With bare root transplants you need to look for J rooting.\u00a0 It sounds pretty obvious but roots should not be showing above the soil.\u00a0 This will result in stunted plants for the entire season.<\/p>\n
Water, water, water!\u00a0 It is exceptionally dry everywhere.\u00a0 Be\u00a0sure that transplants are not allowed to dry out.\u00a0 We usually say that bare root transplants require more overhead irrigation for establishment.\u00a0 However this year all transplants will require a lot of water.\u00a0 We saw it all over middle Georgia last fall.\u00a0 Plug plants were allowed to dry out and much of the roots mass died.\u00a0 The planting material that nurseries use is good for growing transplants, but once it dries out it is hard to get wet again.\u00a0 When that type of material is put into the ground the clay in the soil\u00a0actually wicks the moisture from the root ball.<\/p>\n
Finally it is a good practice to check for spider mites.\u00a0 If you have spider mites you may want to treat this fall, especially if you like to use row covers during the winter.\u00a0 The dry and warm conditions that row covers provide for your strawberry plants is like the Ritz Carlton for spider mites.\u00a0 Finally, it never hurts to send some samples of entire plants to a diagnostic lab.\u00a0 This way if you have any diseases that came from the nursery you can either start your protection early or at least know what to expect as the season progresses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Take care of strawberry transplants now to insure maximum production this spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/50"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/strawberry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}