Why strawberries don’t bloom or bear fruit and what to do. What to do if strawberries don't bloom? Why don't repairing strawberries bloom?

20.03.2024

Our reader S. Potapov from the Smolensk region asks for help:

I have been trying to grow garden strawberries for four years now. I have already replanted it to another place, changed the planting material, and sprayed it with a stimulant, and here again there is rapid flowering - the beds are like flower beds, but there are no berries! Help with practical advice.

In this case, only one practical advice can be given - carefully examine the flowers and ovaries of strawberries during and after flowering.

The reader’s statement that his strawberry bushes are blooming beautifully sounds encouraging, which means that the pre-planting soil has been well fertilized and the planting material has been purchased of good quality.

If after flowering green ovaries form, but they do not increase in size or only the first ovary in the inflorescence fully develops, then the most likely reason is a lack of nutrients or soil moisture for their absorption. Do not forget to carry out full mineral fertilizing after flowering and be sure to water the plants when dry weather sets in during this period.

If there are no green ovaries at all, it is quite possible that the pollination process is disrupted. Most modern varieties of garden strawberries have a very high degree of self-fertility, that is, they do not require pollinating varieties.

However, it is a reliably confirmed fact that when several varieties of strawberries are grown side by side, the overall yield of the plantings increases by 20-25% precisely due to better fruit set during cross-pollination. Perhaps the gardener’s mistake is that every year he bought the best variety, but only one, and it is always better, precisely for reasons of cross-pollination, to grow at least 2-3 varieties nearby.

You need to be careful when choosing early varieties. They are the first to bloom in early May, and with unusually strong flowering, in the event of night frosts, you can be left completely without a harvest. A classic example is the variety Corrado.

The first name of this variety Bouquet– its flowering is so abundant and friendly, because the flowers in the inflorescence do not open gradually over several days, but all at the same time. But if frost occurs on this particular night, then the potential crop is completely destroyed by 100%. Look - when the flower opens, the stamens and pistils inside should be bright yellow. On plants damaged by frost they are black. If the site is located in a lowland, where May frosts are a frequent occurrence, it is better to abandon early varieties altogether, giving preference to mid- and late-ripening ones.

You should also think about whether the gardener is too keen on carrying out chemical treatments and fertilizing just during the flowering period of strawberries. The strong smell of chemicals repels bees and bumblebees that pollinate flowers, which also greatly reduces fruit set.

If, upon careful examination of the flowers, you find greening of the petals of the corolla or deformation of the stamens and pistils (change in color or fusion), then immediately and completely remove such plants along with the mustache, burning them at the stake - these are signs of a viral infection.

By feeding on the juices inside the plant, they greatly weaken it.

During the flowering period, they are concentrated precisely in the peduncle, so the plant can bloom beautifully, but after flowering the ovaries turn brown and dry out due to lack of nutrients. If such signs are detected, the plants are also immediately and completely removed by burning at the stake. The soil is sown with green manure to improve its health, and strawberries are planted in this place no earlier than after 3-4 years.

1. Autumn harvest of the Queen Elizabeth II variety in open ground conditions in the Moscow region. Photo taken September 25, 2014

2. If green ovaries do not develop, there may be a lack of nutrients and moisture.

Z. A healthy flower has white petals and unfused yellow stamens and pistils.

4. But in a flower modified by a viral infection, greening of the petals and pistils and a strong elongation of the receptacle are clearly visible. Such flowers are absolutely sterile. Plants with such flowers must be removed immediately to avoid the spread of infection and contamination of the entire plantation.

5. Redness and swelling on the peduncle are a sign of nematode damage. The photo also shows the sad result - browned, dried ovaries.

At the beginning of summer you are so happy - the strawberries are all white with flowers. But the petals have fallen, the time comes to harvest, but there are no berries! What kind of nightmare is this? Strawberries may not bear fruit for several reasons.

The most common one is that the strawberries are too old. If the strawberry bushes were planted more than 5 years ago, then the ovaries may become less and less, the fruits become smaller, and sometimes the plants may simply stop blooming. In this case, it is necessary to remove the old strawberries and plant new ones. Old strawberries should be burned or thrown out of the area. If you leave it on humus, it will simply sprout and run wild.

Another reason for the lack of fruit is that the plant is too young. Well, yes, strawberries will not bear fruit in the first year, and there is nothing to worry about. By the way, if you planted a plant in the previous year at the end of summer or early autumn, then such plants will not bear fruit either. The fact is that after planting the plant must take root. This is what your strawberries have been doing throughout the fall - forming their root system. Therefore, it did not have time to produce ovaries and, therefore, it will not bear fruit. But if you plant it in early or mid-summer, then next year you will be able to enjoy the berries. True, the harvest will not be too abundant.

Perhaps you have not “fed and watered” your plant enough. Like any other fruit-bearing plant, strawberries need constant feeding and watering. Even if strawberries have already stopped bearing fruit, they should be watered and fed, otherwise, if August is dry, you risk being left without berries next year.

It is not uncommon for strawberries to simply freeze. Many gardeners know that snow is a coat for the earth. If the winter was frosty and there was little snow, then the ground froze and, consequently, the roots of the strawberries died. Therefore, for the winter, it is good to cover the plantings with spruce branches or other covering materials.

Some varieties of strawberries produce barren flowers, and if the fruits do appear, the berries will be small and hard. After all, on the “mustaches” sold on the market it is not written what type they belong to. So it is best to buy ovaries in a greenhouse.

Another reason could be that the soil is simply not suitable for the variety.

Blooming strawberries may not bear fruit if bees and other insects were unable to pollinate them during flowering, for example, there was a rainy period. In addition, bumblebees will not be able to pollinate plants if during this period they were sick with something or their nests were destroyed during plowing. True, in these cases, there will be no fruit on other plants - cherries, plums and even cucumbers. You can try to attract insects by spraying the bushes with warm water and a few drops of anise oil.

If the strawberry blooms, but the flowers dry out and the stalks fall off, then the strawberry has been attacked by the strawberry weevil. This is the biggest problem. Your strawberries will have to be destroyed in the fall. All plant residues must be collected and burned, and the soil must be thoroughly loosened. And new plantings must be treated with pest control agents.

If strawberries do not bear fruit in your summer cottage, an experienced gardener will name several reasons. The first is the degeneration of the variety. Strawberries bear fruit in one place for only a few years - some varieties last 2-3 years, others, more persistent ones, last 4-5 years. Intensive type, modern ones, producing large berries and super-yields, usually lose varietal qualities for 3-4 years.

1. Degeneration, loss of varietal qualities

The solution in the absence or small number of berries, in the presence of fruits that are more deformed, with an excess number of seeds, is simply to change the planting material. Without regret, dig up the bed; if it is more than 5 years old, move it to a new place.

You can take a couple of rosettes with you, but remember: along with them you will also take a bouquet of diseases, fungal spots and viral ones, as well as voracious sweet-toothed pests - old beds have probably become their breeding ground.

If remontant strawberries have stopped bearing fruit, it is often recommended to rejuvenate them by dividing the bush. The advice is useful, but only for a year. By dividing the old mother root into several parts, next year we will get a small harvest, but just a small one - it will be the last. The root system can be divided, but physiologically it has used up all the reserves laid down genetically.

Also, you should not take distant rosettes for seedlings - only the first two, the very first from the mother plant: they are the most viable and promising.

Therefore, reluctantly, take this step - you will not regret it.

2. There are no berries on the strawberries - when did you plant them?

Another reason for the lack of berries (flowers, ovaries) is planting at the wrong time. Read the author’s publication about choosing the timing of planting strawberries.

Fruit buds of early varieties are laid in late summer - early autumn. If you planted strawberries just before the frost, the generative buds did not have time to form, and there is no time for differentiation (formation of fruit buds). All this shifts the timing of fruiting in the summer and significantly reduces fruit formation.

3. Got sick!

Another reason is a fungal infection: if the plants are covered with red, dark spots, then the bushes probably suffer from one of the types of fungal spots - brown, white, angular.

By destroying the leaf apparatus, thanks to which plants absorb oxygen and the process of photosynthesis occurs, the disease also affects the fruiting of the crop. Strawberries may also fail to bear fruit due to fusarium wilt, a disease of the root system. At its initial stage, the plants have a stunted, dried out appearance, there are no berries, then they simply wither - the bushes can literally be pulled out of the soil, if you pull slightly - the root system dies.

This could also be the work of pests - cockchafer larvae, beetles that damage the root system, as well as weevils and slugs.

4. Is it all about feeding?

With a lack of nutrients - nitrogen, potassium, manganese, boron, iron, strawberry fruiting is extremely poor. When planting, organic matter + mineral complex is added, then - during flowering and ovary, the NPK mineral complex is applied at least twice - ready-made fertilizers in chelated form, complex, tank mixture through the fertigation system or 1/ cup of ash + 30 g of urea - as they say, whoever that's a lot. Read more in this article.

5. Pollination, climate and pollinators

Lack of pollination is one of the reasons for the lack of berries - everything is fine in the garden, but there are no berries on the strawberries - they won’t bear fruit this year. Perhaps the ovary is missing due to problems with pollination. The culprit may be the outbreak of heat, the lack of pollinating insects - remember, they were not howled with insecticides and acaricides that act not selectively on the pest, but on all insects, including bees?

Some varieties need pollinators - extremely rarely, but these are found among strawberries - let us remind you that most of us grow garden strawberries. The productivity of others increases in the presence of a pollinator of another variety nearby - for example, in Vikoda, and vice versa, it is less in its absence.

Strawberries don't bloom!

Strawberries of productive age (up to 4 years) do not bloom - there are several reasons. The first reason for the lack of flowers and ovaries on strawberries is the lack of nutrients and moisture at the time of flower bud formation.

Generative buds were laid in August - early September of the previous year - so let’s remember why the plants did not receive enough of the plants needed to start the future harvest. That is why, after fruiting, the plants are fertilized and watered until September.

At extremely high temperatures during the ovary period - and the extreme begins after +30 C - the pollen loses its qualities and may even become sterile. No pollination - no berries. That is why they try to grow early varieties - so that drought does not occur during the ovary period.

One of the obvious reasons for the lack of flowers on strawberries is that they don’t bloom and that’s it! – death of flower buds during freezing, icing. By the way, covering material, film or agrofibre should not touch the plants in winter - frostbite is guaranteed.

Obvious Causes of Common Problems

If strawberry buds dry out and fall off before our eyes, this is due to pests. Strawberry weevil that lays eggs in buds and overwinters in plant debris. To combat it, insecticides are used, treating no later than 5 days before flowering; to prevent it, remove plant debris and loosen the soil in the root zone.

If the center (stigma) of the flowers has darkened, frost is to blame. In this case, the petals remain intact and do not change color or shape. The situation is critical: if the stigmas are dead, there will be no ovary. To prevent this from happening, do not plant plants in cold lowlands; cover them with agrofibre in early spring if there is a threat of return frost.
To save the color from freezing, mist installations are used - moist air cools more slowly, and the rows are watered using sprinkling.

By listening to our advice, you won’t worry about why your strawberries don’t bear fruit – you’ll know what to do for a bountiful harvest.

Many summer residents and private home owners grow strawberries, or, as they are also called, garden strawberries. It often happens that even with good care, the harvest leaves much to be desired. Another picture: the time to harvest comes, but there are not a single berry on the bushes. There are several reasons why strawberries bloom profusely but do not produce a harvest, and all of them are important. Let's look at them.

This is interesting

Few people know that real strawberries are a rare occurrence. It can be identified by the denser “female” and “male” bushes. The latter do not bear fruit, but produce a lot of tendrils and gradually crowd out fruit-bearing bushes. The consequence of this is a sharp drop in yield: all the bushes bloom, but only a few produce berries. It turns out that growing real strawberries is quite a troublesome task. It is for this reason that summer residents have long preferred garden strawberries: they do not require much care, and all the bushes produce a harvest. But since the name “strawberry” is firmly attached to the people, let us continue to call garden strawberries strawberries.

Reason 1: lack of moisture and nutrients

Perhaps the berries are deprived of nutrients or moisture. Experienced gardeners and summer residents always feed faded strawberries with complete mineral fertilizer and water them during dry periods.

Strawberries are among the berries that are demanding on the soil, which indicates the need to know the nuances of using fertilizers.

If the growth rate of the bushes leaves much to be desired, it is advisable to enrich the soil with nitrogen in early spring. Peat oxidation would be useful. In principle, you can limit yourself to organic matter, for example, manure, chicken droppings. Fertilizers are applied under the roots in a 2-centimeter layer and sprinkled with soil. To prepare a solution, 1 liter of organic matter is diluted in 10 liters of water. Nitrogen fertilizers accelerate plant growth, but the main thing here is not to overdo it. Excess nitrogen will cause the development of vegetative mass to the detriment of fruiting.
At the beginning of the season, and then at the end, after pruning the bushes, it is good to feed the strawberries with wood ash. Preparation of liquid solution: ash (2 tbsp.) + boiling water. Infusion time is two to three hours. The product is dissolved in 10 liters of water. 0.5 liters of fertilizer is poured under each bush. Wood ash contains more than 30 useful elements, and there is absolutely no chlorine, which is harmful to strawberries.
At the beginning of growth, fertilizing with a mixture of urea and microelements is effective: water (10 l) + urea (20 g) + ammonium molybdate (2 g) + boric acid. We remind you that boric acid should be dissolved in warm water.

An excellent way to increase the harvest is to feed the berry garden and mulch the bushes with a 10-centimeter layer of chopped straw. It is not for nothing that when translated from English, the name of garden strawberry is literally translated as “straw berry”. Instead of straw, you can use dry hay, sawdust, tree bark, humus or rotted manure.

It is worth noting that if the soil was well amended before planting the strawberries, then for the first couple of years you can limit yourself to only adding wood ash. After all, excess fertilizer can also lead to a decrease in yield.

Reason 2: pollination did not occur

The lack of green ovaries may be due to a disruption in the pollination process. This usually happens during prolonged rains during the flowering period. Light rain is not a problem for insects, but heavy rain prevents bees and bumblebees from doing their work. Of course, you can’t do anything about the weather, but you can attract insects on clear days by treating the bushes with warm water with the addition of honey or a few drops of anise or coriander oil.

It is possible that the cause of the problem lies in the abuse of fertilizing and chemical treatments of flowering bushes. Insects that pollinate flowers are afraid of the smell of chemicals. Add to this the number of honey bees that are decreasing every year.

Perhaps the gardener's mistake is that from year to year he grew only one variety that he liked. And although most varieties do not need pollinator varieties, experience shows that if they are nevertheless planted nearby, strawberry yields will increase by almost 30%.

The practice of experienced summer residents shows that it is more effective to grow two or three varieties of berries at once. The main thing is not to go wrong with early varieties that bloom in early May. At this time, even minor night frosts are destructive for strawberries. A striking example of this is the Bouquet berry, which dies completely during accidental frosts. In areas located in the lowlands, it is better to completely abandon the cultivation of early varieties, giving preference only to mid- and late-ripening ones.

Reason 3: weed varieties

If proper care does not give a positive result, it is likely that along with the seedlings purchased on the market, you received weed varieties, for example, Dubnyak, Podveska and others. In the garden beds the bushes look absolutely healthy, but they do not bear fruit. If berries are formed, they are small and deformed; you don’t even want to pick them. During the season, each weed bush produces about 40 rosettes. They quickly take root and fill the garden bed. If you do not get rid of these bushes in time, they will crowd out cultivated varieties. Then you definitely won’t have to wait for the harvest.

The Zhmurka variety is easy to identify by its very low bushes and numerous wrinkled leaves. Strawberries bloom well, but instead of forming ovaries, the flowers simply close and dry out.
Bakhmutka is a tall variety with pubescent leaves. This is a profusely flowering plant with small and pink berries. The bones are pressed in, but come off easily.
Features of the pendant: pinkish inflorescences are clearly visible against the background of other flowers, small elongated red berries.
Dubnyak does not form flower stalks at all.

Weed bushes are removed by double “cleaning”:

during flowering, when among the flowering bushes the non-flowering Dubnyak bushes and the “Pendants” bushes blooming with pink flowers stand out clearly;
during the fruiting period. At this time, weed varieties produce small berries or a complete absence of berries.

If the weed varieties have managed to fill the entire garden bed, you will have to uproot all the bushes and purchase new seedlings in a safe place. As you can see, getting rid of weeds is not so easy. That is why gardeners recommend removing any suspicious bushes from the garden.

Reason 4: pest activity

The lack of introduction may be a consequence of the activity of the strawberry weevil, a small pest that destroys up to 60% of the crop. The presence of this insect can be determined by holes in the leaves and bitten buds, which hang on the brush for a long time and then dry up.

Since the females managed to lay their eggs in the damaged buds, it is too late to spray the plants with anything and preventive work should be postponed. In the fall, you should collect all plant debris and loosen the soil around the bushes. And in the spring of next year, during the period when the buds appear, treat them with insecticides. It is better to use biological products: “Iskra”, etc.

Reason 5: viral infection

If, when examining the flowers, you find that the petals have turned green, and the pistils and stamens have grown together or changed their color, you can immediately tear out and burn the bushes - this is a clear sign of a viral infection.

It is better to plant new bushes in place of onions, garlic, carrots, beets, legumes or salad crops. Bulbous flowers, such as tulips, are also considered favorable predecessors. But you shouldn’t plant strawberries in place of potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and sunflowers.

If it doesn’t work out with a new plantation in a fresh area, you can plant the strawberries in their original place. Before this, the land is neutralized. You will have to remove all the bushes and select the soil using a spade bayonet.

The filled pit is leveled and white mustard is planted. It grows quickly and disinfects the soil. If you sow green manure in early July, then by the end of the month the mustard will be preparing to flower. Before it blooms, the greens should be cut with a shovel flush with the soil, finely chopped and dug into the ground.

After this, marigold seeds are sown in the garden bed. By the end of August they manage to collect a sufficient amount of greenery. At the end of summer, they should also be chopped with a shovel and buried to a shallow depth. If desired, you can have time to sow mustard again. With the onset of frost, it will fall to the ground on its own. The garden bed is left in this form until spring. When the soil warms up, all that remains is to add humus and a little ash.

Disease prevention involves washing newly acquired seedlings until all the soil is washed away. Then the plants are immersed for a quarter of an hour in a saline solution: salt (5 tbsp) + water (5 l). The water procedure is repeated. After this you can plant it. Next to strawberries, calendula, marigolds or winter garlic will be useful. The place can be turned strawberry after at least three years.

Many problems that prevent the formation of strawberry ovaries after good flowering can be prevented. If time has been lost and nothing can be done this season, just learn from your mistakes and you won’t have to deal with a similar problem in the future.