I get a lot of questions from growers and agents that are working
with our different strawberry growers around the state about how do
you detect whether a plant has been injured by a winter freeze.
So I thought I would show you in a few seconds
here how we go about doing that.
First of all, you just need a little hand trowel like this.
Pick a warmer day in winter to do it.
Just go around the base of the plant, around the periphery here, about the
size of the plastic hole.
Just go ahead and dig it up.
You should see some nice, healthy roots.
My gosh, this one must be a foot long--a pretty impressive root system for this plug plant.
The next thing to do is go ahead and separate out the soil from the
plant.
This was a plug plant, so you can actually see some of the
original artificial soil media that we use.
Give it a good shake.
You begin to see what I call the original plant.
That darker area is where the plug root ball was originally.
You can see how nicely it's grown out beyond the plug and rooted
through since last October.
What we're going to do now is a quick check, or diagnostic if you
will, for whether we've had any serious injury to the plant.
What it involves is just taking a knife.
You might want to have a piece of wood or a woodblock like I have here to
do this on.
What we do is usually the first step is just go ahead and peel off
all the leaves, like this.
It makes it a little bit easier to do the cut that I'm going to do next.
It's good to get as much of that soil off as you possibly can.
Finally, what I'm going to do is make what we call an up-and-down
or a longitudinal cut right through the crown tissue.
The objective is to take a look at the inside of the crown
and see if we see a nice, ivory-white color.
So I'm going to go ahead and do that right now.
I usually start from up at the top.
I'll cut right through some of those flower buds that have emerged from the
crown this winter.
And go right on through and try to make it so
that we can get a good idea as to whether we've had some crown injury.
We've had some slight injury here, actually.
I have learned that you've got to look very quickly.
Once the air gets to this tissue, it begins to oxidize it.
It turns brown.
What I can tell you this other night it got to five degrees,
there's actually some injury here in these areas of light brown
patches of tissue.
That's from the cold event the other night.
I suspect if we cut into another plant that
was under the row cover we won't see evidence of any of these light
brown patchy areas.
This is mild injury, though.
This is not something I would be concerned about if I were a commercial grower.
What I concern myself about when I make cuts like these is
when I see large streaks of brownish tissue that runs up and
through the crown area, which I don't see that here.
Luckily we came through I think in good shape.
But no doubt there was some injury from that five
degree exposure.
I'd like to show you another plant and cut through its crown.
This plant is a plant that was beneath the row
cover protection during a recent freeze episode of five degrees Fahrenheit.
Let's go ahead and do the same thing again.
You take the leaves off.
Give it a good shake; get all that soil away from the roots.
Then we are all set to go ahead and make that longitudinal cut
through the crown again.
Do that right now.
I go right from the center, at the top of the plant in the crown
area, where I'm cutting through the crown first.
I usually do it this way because it's a cleaner cut and you
don't drag a lot of soil from the root into that nice, white ivory
tissue of the crown itself.
It looks excellent.
I had a little red clay come in on my blade.
What I'd like to show you is a crown that looks very much in good
condition.
There's that ivory color.
As I show this to you, you'll begin to see some darkening.
That's as the air is exposed to this crown tissue, it does begin to darken.
I'm going to make a second cut, because this cut was actually a
little bit too far out towards the edge.
I'm going to take another look at this same crown here.
Bear with me.
[silence] OK, I'm going to open it up and have a look.
Oh, that's perfect.
This is a great dissection of it.
You can see what we call the cambium tissue.
That's a different whitish-colored tissue here that is critical
to this plant's production of new cells and regenerating new
plant tissues.
If this area is darkened, you could be in a lot of
trouble.
But thankfully that is all in good shape and the center of
the crown was a nice, ivory color with no brown patching whatsoever.
So it looks like that row cover did its job here the other night.
So this crop is as good as it was going in that freeze.
It's come out pretty much unscathed.