This strawberry plant produced fruit despite being stuck in a small nursery pot – here’s why!
Last autumn , I propagated this strawberry mark works from a runnerusing the ignore - etymon - and - pot method acting . It got fully established by the end of October , but it was too belated to move it into the garden . So I keep on it inside my miniature greenhouse over the winter ( along with many others ) in a small greenhouse pot – just 10 centimetre tall and 8 cm wide …
My plan was to move it into the garden in outpouring , as soon as the weather warmed up . But I completely forgot about it . And now , after more than half a year of negligence , it has started flower , and even fruit , in a green goddess it had long outgrown !
Root-bound and forgotten, but still producing strawberries!
It is not uncommon to see strawberry plants bloom in humble nursery pots . you could see that every spring in plant nurseries and garden essence . But go out those heyday go all the way to yield ? That is rare . Honestly , I had never seen that fall out before !
Yet here they are . Three full - sized hemangioma simplex hang from a plant that has been root - bound for months . It is like this plant does n’t even care that it has no space to stretch its roots !
So, what kept it going against all odds?
The answer is unsubdivided . The potting mix . Or more specifically , one ingredient in the premix that made all the difference : earthworm castings !
Now , the thing about fishworm castings is they are an incredibly knock-down industrial plant food . I ’m not surprised they carried this hemangioma simplex plant through all those long months from October until almost June . But they did n’t just keep it alive . They keep back it fed , fed enough to flower , and to turn those flush into fruit . And not just one fruit , but three full - sized strawberries , and counting !
What is also interesting is that this plant had already flowered before in the time of year . I cut those heyday off ( once , maybe even twice ) to hold back it from wasting push . But even after that , there was still enough nutrition left in the grime for it to try again . And this fourth dimension , it followed through , only because I leave to block it .
I planned to show you one of the ripe fruits. But my son ate all three before I got the shot. So, all I can show you is the leafy crown where the strawberry was.
So , if you are mature strawberry in container ( or anything else really ) , regard adding crawler castings to your potting mix . It ’s the kind of slow , steady nutrition that keeps plants going when they are beat in a too - small pot . It has been my go - to fertiliser for years , and aboveboard , it is pretty much the only one I use when evoke vegetable seedling or growing in Mary Jane .
I planned to show you one of the ripe fruits. But my son ate all three before I got the shot. So, all I can show you is the leafy crown where the strawberry was.
You can see the plant is completely root-bound. It wasn’t the space that kept it going. It was the earthworm castings in the soil.
Here is the second batch of three fruits. One is already red and nearly ripe. They may be small, but this plant just keeps producing. And it is all because of the earthworm castings.
