Today, strawberry young plants are offered on the market in a wide variety of forms. Strawberry plants mostly came and come from special strawberry farms, which mainly supply commercial fruit growers. Through our young strawberry plants we also want to enable pot plant production companies, perennial nurseries and tree nurseries to produce their own strawberry plants. In addition, we offer an innovative and exclusive strawberry assortment that has been specially bred for the demands of the home garden: robust, easy to cultivate and super aromatic. With the new Double Pleasure® breeding line, attractive flower shapes and colours are now added without the end consumer having to compromise on fruit quality at the end of the day.
The classic conventional strawberry young plants
On the market there are mainly two types of strawberry young plants.
Frigo strawberry young plants
Picture: flowering frigo strawberry plant
The so-called frigo strawberries are rooted runners, which remain in the fields until autumn, are then dug up and then frozen at a slight negative temperature. In this way the plants can be stored until about May.
A positive aspect of these strawberry young plants is that after potting there is a reliable yield since flowers were still differentiated on the propagation fields in autumn. However, this young plant quality deals with bare root plants, where the roots have to be cut in advance only to then pot the plants laboriously by hand into the desired pot size. Also, these strawberries do not usually produce beautiful compact plants because the flowers come at the same time when the new leaves start to bud. Another disadvantage is that the above-ground organs usually develop much faster from the reserves than the roots. This leads to a lack of roots in the sales plants, especially in 6-packs produced from frigo plants.
Seed-propagated strawberry young plants
Strawberry varieties, which are offered as seed-propagated varieties, are usually F1 hybrids. These are above all the existing red and pink strawberry varieties that are available for home gardening.
In addition, most seed-propagated strawberry varieties are also everbearing varieties. Everbearing strawberry varieties flower and bear fruit independently of the day length and thus seedlings can also produce a yield within a year. In the case of June-bearing strawberry varieties, on the other hand, the flowers are only formed in the second half of the summer, i.e. in the natural short day. This naturally also applies to seedlings of these types, so there will be no yield in the year of sowing.
A positive aspect of the seed-propagated strawberry young plants is that they are relatively small tray plants, meaning that they can be processed very well, possibly even mechanically. However, here the selection of varieties is limited. There are no very good tasting varieties and due to the F1 hybrid breeding, which mainly takes place in the greenhouse, the robustness and resistance is sometimes insufficient.
The innovative strawberry young plants from Lubera Edibles
Picture: pink flowering strawberry Double Pleasures® Hanging Pink Wonder®
With Lubera Edibles' innovative strawberry young plants, the tedious potting of bare-root frigo plants is a thing of the past – when potting with standardised tray plants, the hourly output is many times higher. Aboveground and underground organs of strawberry young plants develop in parallel; by the time the plant looks marketable, it has formed enough roots...
At the same time, our exclusive Lubera range solves most problems of seed-propagated plants: our varieties have been specially bred for the home garden market; Vescana hybrids have significantly improved the taste, and due to classic selection and clone breeding under field conditions, the robustness and resistance are also better.
Thanks to our extensive breeding programme at Lubera®, we can offer a wide range of varieties: June-bearing strawberry varieties, everbearing varieties, everbearing varieties for pots, climbing strawberries, hanging strawberries, the Double Pleasure® strawberries with the pink flowers. Our team of growers always has the end consumer in mind: how they want to grow their strawberries, what are the uses of their plants and fruits and which new garden niches can be opened up with innovative strawberry varieties.
Strawberry young plants in the standard tray
Picture: Strawberry young plants in the 60-cell standard tray
Strawberry young plants in the 60-cell standard tray are a good possibility for a fast spring production. This young plant quality is suitable for producing larger single pots (T12/T13) and can be processed by hand or machine. These strawberry young plants are produced in late summer, directly in the short day. This ensures that the plants still form flowering plants and that they also produce a yield in the coming year – the year that they are potted into a larger container.
Strawberry young plants as in vitro plugs
Picture: invitro plugs, the innovative strawberry young plants
In vitro plugs as strawberry young plants are a real innovation. These very small plants can do much more than you might expect them to do at first. However, this quality is available for summer production at the earliest. But this is also where the advantages come into play. If in vitro plugs are used for a summer production of 6/10/12-cell packs, for example, for the sales window in late summer, then you get saleable plants within 4 - 6 weeks. This means for a planned sales date around the middle or end of August the plants should be produced at the beginning to middle of July.
This strawberry young plant quality can also be used for the production of tray or single pot plants up to container plants for the sales window in the spring. For this purpose, the in vitro plugs are planted directly into the sales containers in late summer. However, this should be done by mid-August at the latest.
By the end of the vegetation period, well rooted and compact plants are obtained, which have already formed flowering plants for the coming year. This ensures a yield for the later end consumer. The customer buys a flowering pot plant in the spring, which will already be fruiting in a few weeks.
For overwintering, the plants should be protected with a heavy winter protection fleece. At the beginning of the new year, the plants can already be cleaned in advance. Here, however, care should be taken to ensure that the freshly cleaned plants are placed as sheltered as possible. Otherwise there can be plant losses because the foliage has a certain insulating effect and thereby also offers some protection.
Click here for more information.
Would you like more information, an individual consultation or information about additional ranges?
Click here for the complete 2019 catalogue, which can be downloaded.
If you have specific questions, please do not hesitate to contact our customer service, where you can also spontaneously place an order.
And of course we are always there for you via telephone.
If you want to be regularly informed about news, etc., you can also subscribe to our gardener newsletter here, which we send out about once a month - it's worth it!
