June-bearers are short-day strawberry plants that produce a single crop of strawberries during a short 4 - 5-week period. To produce high levels of fruit in that short period of time, your plants must achieve maximum performance with as little stress as possible. Therefore, make increasing plant resilience a key part of your cultivation strategy to stay ahead of stressful situations. Administering our biostimulants is a natural solution which helps you to do that.
When they have sufficient nutrition, moisture, light and a good temperature, June-bearers are able to grow, flower and produce optimally. If humidity, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels are in order, plus if there is a perfect balance between the different components, all the conditions for a resilient crop have been met. Maintaining this balance is hard work. Abiotic stress factors such as heat, a lack of moisture or mineral deficiency are a threat. Fruit rot, mildew, spider mites and thrips are more examples of stress that you might have to deal with.
To achieve an optimal plant growth balance, it is important to make strawberry plants resilient when they are as young as possible. Therefore, talk to your plant supplier and ask them to breed your tray plants in accordance with the PlantoSys approach. This ensures robust, resilient plants that have an advantage from the start. They grow better and produce more fruit until the end of the season. The PlantoSys approach is the result of five years of research in collaboration with Delphy.
To achieve the desired growth balance, stress-free, as soon as possible after planting out, one of our solutions is our ICM approach. This approach is based on drip feeding with SalicylPure every week, supplemented by regular application of plant protection products. The willow bark extract in SalicylPure stimulates the plant’s own immune system from the inside out and therefore its self-healing capacity. This also improves root stimulation, because of which your plants have a greater capacity to absorb water and nutrients.
Delphy has included SalicylPure in its own tray plant strategy!
The ICM advice based on SalicylPure leads to a cumulative production increase of more than 10%. Research by Delphy ISFC with the variety Elsanta reveals that the average fruit weight Class I large is the highest through this strategy. SalicylPure produces more roots faster and results in longer petioles and larger leaf blades, allowing more photosynthesis; the additional sugars that are formed result in greater levels of flower formation with more and heavier fruit.
Recommended dosage/advice - SalicylPure in June-bearers
If your crop faces rapidly worsening stress factors during growth, such as heat, replace SalicylPure with 1 litre of ArgicinPlus per ha in your weekly spraying schedule. This contains both willow bark extract from SalicylPure, but also silicon. This gives an extra boost to your plants’ resilience: silicon plays an important role in regulating internal moisture management. Silicon also literally strengthens your plants.
Nowadays, June-bearers are not only grown as a single crop, but also as a double crop. In double cropping June-bearers, the old summer leaves are removed towards the end of January to early February and the greenhouse is gradually heated to encourage growth. Cutting and removing the old leaves can cause cutting wounds, but this also actively spreads diseases that may be present.
Immediately after removing the old leaves, we recommend boosting the resilience of the plants by spraying them with a mixture of Cuprum and Argentum. This mixture boosts the growth of the new parts of the plants that are growing and promotes photosynthesis, meaning the crop becomes more vital and less susceptible to stress.
Recommended dosage/advice - Argentum and Cuprum after removing the summer leaves of June-bearers
Immediately after planting during the summer or after staking, the strawberry plants need all the additional help they can get for effective and even growth. You can provide this additional help with SalicylPure; this improves the self-healing capacity and the continued development of the root system. An additional advantage are the significantly heavier fruits.
Recommended dosage/advice for use - SalicylPure June-bearers (double cropping)
The use of clean irrigation water from the basin or silo throughout the season and keeping the irrigation system free from blockages requires innovative solutions. Our solution is the use of the two - 100% natural – water-maintenance products, Blue Bac-1 and Blue-Bac-2.
This product contains useful and harmless specific working bacteria that reduces algae growth to a minimum and also gives the digestion process of dead algae an extra boost. Once the optimum balance is achieved, your basin and/or silo become clean and stay clean.
Recommended dosage/advice for use - Blue Bac-1
This product, containing special Bacillus bacteria, keeps your irrigation system free from ‘green film’ and blockages. The enzymes produced by the product adhere to the inner wall of pipes, hoses and drippers and form a very smooth ‘coating’, which organic contaminants, such as sand or phosphate deposits, cannot adhere to. Blue Bac-2 also boosts root development and provides a more stable pH (6.0 – 6.3) without further acidification of the water and also keeps drippers free from blockages.
Recommended dosage/advice - Blue Bac-2
Tip
The recommended products, SalicylPure, ArgicinPlus and Argentum, cannot be used in irrigation water to which hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) has been added. Blue Bac-1 and Blue Bac-2 are natural alternatives to H2O2 or other chemical disinfectants. Contact our advisor to discuss our solution if you nevertheless wish to use hydrogen peroxide at the same time as SalicylPure, ArgicinPlus and Argentum.
Questions or advice?
Do you have any additional questions, or would you like tailor-made advice concerning your own cultivation situation? Contact your dealer or our advisor Alwin Scholten. Alwin can be contacted on telephone number +31 (0)6 49 30 49 33, or email him on alwin.scholten@plantosys.nl.
The effects of our natural products have been proven in practice and research. Our products fit within an ICM (integrated pest management) approach. No safety term has to be taken into account at harvest and all of our products are residue-free, show no growth inhibition and have no re-entry restrictions.
