Important considerations for planting:

Careful planting is very important for early fruit and good fruit production. You cannot make early strawberries from plants with damaged root systems, and damaged roots can allow plant disease problems to overtake the plant while the plant repairs and forms new roots.

Moisture is very important to the new plant. If the roots of the new plant ever dry too much, the roots will be quickly damaged, and will never function to grow the plant.

This is very, very important for early plantings. Plants harvested early (before October 10 usually) make leaf growth very quickly, but have roots that grow slowly. New leaves require the plant to absorb increasing amounts of moisture. To keep the plant alive, the roots must be in good condition and must be in contact with good moisture. The more roots that are placed in good moisture, the better chance the plant has to survive the difficult time before the roots catch up with leaf growth.

• If the roots are cut off short, there will be less early root system to absorb water, and it may not be possible to maintain bed moisture above the level of the shortened roots.

• If there is air around the roots, there is much chance of damaging the roots exposed to air, and no chance for the exposed roots to help support the plant.

• It the roots are bent near the top of the bed, it may be easy for the bed to dry below the root level, killing or damaging the plant.

• If the bed ever dries too much, moisture may be taken away from the roots. This will damage the roots, and injure the growth of the plant. If the bed ever dries below the roots, the plant roots may be permanently injured, and the plant may die.

  You cannot have even, healthy plants and early fruit production without careful planting and careful management of early water to maintain moisture around the roots. Careful plantings with the plant roots placed very well will always produce heavier and earlier than careless plantings that require replants, and recovery from root injury.

   

   

  You cannot be early with replants, or plants trying to repair their root systems!

Recommendations:

• Give the plants good protection during planting by filling boxes of plants with water to soak the roots before you take the plants into the field. Remember, even a few minutes in the wind and heat can dry out plant roots and injure them before they are put into the ground. Don’t let that happen. If the plant roots look dried out before they are planted, they will not perform properly, and you may have difficulty with dieback from injured roots when the plants begin to leaf out. Please soak roots before you plant!

• When you plant, remember that every plant is important. Every plant placed well can make you money. Every plant placed poorly will cause you problems. You are in difficulty if you must think more about saving the bad plants in your field than growing the good plants that will make you money.

  Please don’t plant to finish quickly: plant to do a great job!

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