Strawberries.

There are several ways of growing strawberries:

• On the flat in the open round.
• In plastic covered raised beds in the open with drip irrigation.
• In 'Growbags' either in the open or under cover.
• In purpose manufactered systems.

We know that strawberries benefit from irrigation, but until we know when a soil is 'full' we do not know our starting point. This is essential. (see definition of 'Full')

Once he has established 'full' the grower needs to understand when to start watering. There is no 'correct' way for all varieties and soil types - you need to do your own experiments and find what produces the best combination for needs.

What are your needs?

• High yields
• Good size
• Good taste
• Good shelf life

These graphs showing water use in Strawberries. The irrigations in April were not enough to wet below 20cm, but from the beginning of May you can 'see' water getting down to 30cm and eventually to 50cm. The crop is now close to 'full'. We know there is water use is at a particular depth by the 'stepping', which is day and night water use.

We can conclude that the soil is 'full' down to 50cm from the 16th May. We need to know the total water content and then start to make some decisions about when to water and how much to apply.

The graph below is a summed (0-30cm) graph of above. It shows 'full' and various other lines, which may be important in your irrigation decisions. Nobody knows where those lines are on your soil, with your irrigation system, your crop stage, your soil conditions etc. Do your own experiments to find out.

This graph shows water use in the top 50cm of soil with initially water being applied daily. The practice was then changed to applying a lot of water less often. It can be seen that after the large irrigations the water use was large (big steps) and that on the 27th August the water use slowed down due to lack of water. It can be seen that water use immediately increased after water was applied. What effect all this has on yield and quality we can only guess, but if you need to know (and you surely do) then you will need to monitor correctly and do your own experiments.

The next page is all to do with bag\wardwing type growing systems.