Accidental Fertilizer OD

We recently started some strawberry plants in the heated greenhouse, mother plants for some early runner production.

I used some media with slow-release fertilizer that had been left over from the main propagation season last autumn.  When I checked the media EC with a pour-through method, it was 2.3 μS/cm, which is high for strawberries. There will be a lot of nitrogen sloshing around there!

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The Osmocote in the media has been moist and the coating has been breaking down over the last several months, so it’s not surprising that there is extra fertilizer sitting in there.

However, this is the first time I’ve noticed that the strawberry plants are actually pushing out a wee bit of salts through their hydathodes, those tiny pores at the leaf edges that are sometimes bejeweled with water droplets in the morning.

I also took the opportunity to document what “vegetative” growth looks like in strawberries.  The plant leaves are pretty soft, a bit thin, and light green.  There’s that “gutation” from the leaf margins every morning. The greenhouse is a warm 20°C during the day, there’s no wind, and I’m keeping the media pretty moist, without much of a dry-down between waterings.

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Unfortunately, these plants will be susceptible to botrytis!

Contrast these plants with the ones in the greenhouse next door, which have a much more “generative” look. Notice the dark green thick leaves. Botrytis hasn’t been a major issue for us in the fruiting plants this winter.

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