Strawberry Green can be tailored to a grower's exact needs, but is generally composed of BVB Accretio, coir, and perlite. "We’ve been talking about that first component for a while now and with good reason. It has proved itself to be a supreme addition to strawberry substrates over and over," BVB substrates says.
New, recent research that compares this type of substrate to more conventional high-quality mixtures (peat and coir-based) confirms this once more. The results show strawberry plants grow more vigorously while showing substantially faster rooting in this substrate.
The latest research
In recent months BVB Substrates collaborated with Luuk van den Eertwegh from Fresh Forward to research different substrate types and plant densities. A tasty Low-Chill strawberry variety called the FS-1705 from Fresh Forward was used in these tests.
That new plant variety aims to bring a good-tasting greenhouse strawberry that can compete with other early greenhouse strawberries to the market early in the year (late February / early March). With FS-1705 it is possible to harvest over a long period and with stable fruit weight.
Three types of substrates from BVB Substrates were trialed comparing crop growth and production numbers.
Results show a high level of easily available water (10% higher than in the peat or coir substrate) using Strawberry Green. This ensured that the fruit weight consistently remained at a stable 22 grams in this mixture. It also enables using a higher plant density.
The faster rooting, and therefore better root growth within Strawberry Green, also ensured slightly higher production numbers in the first weeks. Overall production in the three different substrates was largely comparable.
More about the Green product line.
