Strawberry Weeds: Zhmurka, Dubnyak, Bakhmutka, Suspension

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

With long-term cultivation of strawberries, weed plants appear on the plantation, which must be removed from the site. For this purpose, during the period of flowering and ripening of berries, it is necessary to periodically, twice a season, carry out a variety cleaning - to remove weed plants that multiply very intensively and can displace the main varieties.

Where do these weed plants (and sometimes weed varieties) come from?

In accordance with the morphological characteristics, the strawberry fruit is a false berry, the pulp of which grows from the receptacle, and the actual fruits are achenes located on the pulp. Their number, color and degree of immersion in the pulp of the berry depend on the variety.

It is known that strawberries reproduce in a vegetative way, with rosettes, this allows you to preserve the varietal characteristics of the plant.

Seed propagation is mainly used in breeding work when developing new varieties, while a very diverse offspring is obtained, and the characteristics of the variety are not preserved. From each achene, even taken from one berry, so-called seedlings grow, differing from each other in various characteristics. Further study of them and careful long-term selection according to the desired characteristics allow the breeder to choose the best seedlings (maybe several out of a thousand), propagate them in a vegetative way - with rosettes, and arrange the variety.

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So why, when planting strawberries with varietal planting material, does the clogging of plantations occur?

The fact is that when harvesting, gardeners sometimes leave individual ripe berries on the beds or in the rows of plants (with one-line placement), which overripe by the next harvest, and, in order not to spoil the presentation of the product, they are left on the plantation. For the same reason, pecked, damaged berries are left, or together with rotten berries, they are picked and left in the furrow.

The berries that remained unharvested for the next year are the source of seedlings from their seeds with various characteristics that are not inherent in this variety. And then, when they are multiplied by rosettes ("mustaches"), the plantation becomes clogged with plants that do not belong to the planted variety.

Often in the plantings of strawberries, in addition to weed seedlings, there are also weed varieties that do not produce berries at all or form small off-grade berries with achenes pressed into the pulp (Zhmurka, Dubnyak, Bakhmutka, Podveska), but having strong bushes with a large number of rosettes.

Zhmurka is a weed that looks like strawberries, but does not produce a crop. The flowers bloom, but then, as it were, close their eyes and do not form berries.

Dubnyak is a weed variety that does not form peduncles at all and does not produce a crop. The bush is powerful, densely leafy. The leaves are dark green, with large lobes. The stipules are red. The mustache appears in large numbers in early summer.

Bakhmutka is a small-fruited, low-yielding variety. The bush is high, strongly spreading. Leaves are thin, dull, furrowed, pubescent, with convex lobes. The variety is resistant to diseases. The berries are tasteless, small, ovoid or round, pinkish in color. Gives a lot of mustache.

Suspension - just like Bakhmutka, forms a large number of creeping shoots and rosettes. Medium bush. The leaves are dark green, not pubescent. The middle lobe of the leaf is rounded. The leaf blade is concave. The petiole is covered with erect hairs. The stipules are pink. The berries are dark red, elongated, the seeds are deeply embedded in the pulp.

Gardeners should know that in no case should rosettes be taken from such plants for reproduction, and weed bushes must be immediately and ruthlessly removed from plantations.

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Grade cleaning must be carried out annually on the strawberry plantation. Usually they are made twice a season: the first - during the flowering period, when weeds are clearly visible - Zhmurka, which does not give development of flowers, and Dubnyak, which does not form peduncles at all; and the second - during the ripening period of berries, when you can identify Bakhmutka and Suspension. In addition, at the same time, weed seedlings, which do not correspond to the variety planted on the site, are removed at the same time. And in no case should it be allowed that overripe, pecked and rotten berries remain on the beds or in the furrows during the harvesting period. They should be collected in a separate container and removed from the site, otherwise they will serve as a source of further contamination of the plantation with seedlings.

Only by fulfilling these requirements, each gardener can be sure of the purity of the strawberry plantations on his site.

Usually, simultaneously with the variety cleaning, the most productive bushes with large berries are revealed inside the variety. Such bushes are noted in order to further take outlets from them for reproduction.