Strawberry merchant's wife (zemklunika): description of the variety, photos, reviews of gardeners

Strawberries, or rather Kupchikha strawberries, are a hybrid obtained from large-fruited garden strawberries and European strawberries (nutmeg). Its taste and aroma are reminiscent of wild strawberries, only much larger.

In this review, you can compare the stated characteristics of the variety with the opinion of gardeners who have already become closely acquainted with “Kupchikha”

Description, photo and characteristics of the variety

The hybrid is not picky; it can be planted both in the shade and in the sun. The growing region is of great importance; the further north, the more preferable is the sunny side and vice versa.

Gardeners have successful experience in growing Kupchikha in greenhouses, containers and pots.

Planting seedlings carried out either in a cluster method according to a 40x40 cm pattern, or in a strip method, with a distance between rows of up to 1 meter. It is highly advisable to mulch the beds so that the berries do not lie on the ground.

The bushes are powerful, spreading up to 40 cm high. The number of flower stalks in an adult bush is 20-30 pieces.
Medium early ripening in June-July.
Productivity is 300 - 400 g of berries per bush. The weight of the berries of the first harvest is 15-20 g, subsequently the berries become much smaller.

Berries with dense pulp, irregular, elongated shape, often with an unripe nose. The taste is sweet, reminiscent of wild strawberries. They tolerate transportation well.

Disease resistance is high.
Frost resistance: minus 25°C
Recommended regions for cultivation: central Russia, the Urals, Southern Siberia, Primorsky Krai and all southern regions.

Advantages of the variety

1. The undoubted advantage of this variety is its high winter hardiness. Strawberries can overwinter under snow without any shelter.

2. High yield. But here a clarification is necessary: a good harvest - with good care.

Here is the opinion of gardeners:

Nadezhda Rumyantseva

You need to learn how to grow a merchant's wife, for me the dredge is the most difficult berry - processing, fertilizing, weeding, loosening - if you miss something, the result is immediately obvious (or on the berry). The merchant's wife is delicious, the very first one is eaten, the first berry is large - sometimes the size of a matchstick boxes, great when frozen. I am for little, but high quality. I don’t plant in acres, but I change varieties.The merchant's wife will definitely be in the garden, although her mustache is boring.

Oleg Saveiko With. Khoreshki, Poltava region.

Finally, the Merchant's wife gained her taste. During the constant rains there was no nutmeg aftertaste. A few days of sunshine and a delicious meal!
Two-year-old bushes are all covered with berries, 13-17 flower stalks. And the berry is nothing like the old earthworms. If the household doesn’t eat it, I’ll try to determine the yield.
I’m delighted with the variety!

3. Earthweed bushes rarely get sick

4. The rapid growth of the mustache, combined with excellent survival rate, makes it easy to expand the plantation. True, this is a plus only at the initial stage, then you have to fight with the adaptation.

Galina P. Moscow

I planted it in spring 2018 with purchased young seedlings. Five seedlings produced a sea of mustaches. And I multiplied it for myself into a whole garden bed and distributed it to the neighbors. These are the mustaches that have grown.

5. Overripe berries do not rot, but dry right on the bushes. They can be collected and immediately stored for winter.

6. Most gardeners (though not all) are delighted with the taste of this strawberry.

Lesina Kyiv oblast. Boyarka

All my guests who come can’t tear themselves away from the Merchant’s Wife, they are crazy about the taste.

Mikhailovna

I can't remain silent. I really love strawberry jam and consider it incomparable to strawberry or wild strawberry jam. Yes, the subsequent berries are small, but you can pick them two or three times. Yes, it's not easy to assemble, but it's worth it. We no longer collect change. The berries are very sweet and very aromatic. Even passing by, you will turn and smile. And how it blooms! I have three rows of 6 m each. Between them is spandex. In the fourth year I’m thinking of transplanting it to another place; it has already grown a lot and will become smaller.

7. This variety does not require a pollinator; fruit set reaches 100%

8.The berries tolerate transportation well, do not leak and can be stored for several days without losing their presentation.

Disadvantages of the variety

No matter how good a variety is, there will always be people who don't like it. This is especially true for the taste qualities of the Merchant's Wife. Most people like it, but not everyone:
goldenjana Sumy

But I don’t like the taste of the Merchant’s Wife at all. I don’t even know what to do with the bushes, at least throw them away. I’ve only tried the first berries, I’ll wait for the end of fruiting and draw conclusions. No, it’s already the second time, the bushes are powerful and large. There are a lot of berries. But as the dry ones already said, the taste is sweet, but not strawberry. Here they write about “nutmeg”, to me the berry smells more like some kind of cologne or air freshener. I have no desire to eat these berries at all.
The idea arose to dry them, they are already a bit dry, maybe they will dry without problems, and in winter I will put them in tea. Somehow like this.

Approximately the same can be said about the tendency of the variety to form crops. While we're at it strawberry propagation - this is undoubtedly a plus, but when you then have to regularly pull out this mustache, it’s already a disadvantage.

Grows, multiplies, a sea of whiskers. Fills the bed in a season and survives everyone. They gave us five bushes last year, and this year the entire garden bed was under it. Over the summer I halved the bushes a couple of times.

If you don't take care of the plantation, it quickly becomes overgrown.

But there is a drawback that both opponents and supporters of the Merchants mention when describing the variety:

Very often the berries have an unripe tip
The berries contain a lot of hard and fairly large seeds.

mopsdad1 Stary Oskol

For me - the best variety. There is Clery, Black Prince, Malvina, Bagryana, Asia. Not a single one was even close to the taste. And the yield was excellent. And the green tip doesn’t even bother me at all. There are 40 bushes growing.Mine say remove everything and plant it with Merchant's Wife and Malvina.>

natka Primorsky Krai

I liked the taste of Kupchikha's, but the seeds kill me. I ate the berries, and then had to spit them out for another ten minutes.

The berries contain many large seeds

Another drawback: the bushes form so much ovary that they are not able to fully fill all the berries. To some extent this can be leveled out intensive care, but still, each subsequent collection will be much smaller than the previous one.

Although some gardeners find a way out:

Tatiana Natalina

In my Kuban, the Merchant's Wife sits thickly, like a dense rug, in partial shade, on clay. There are noticeably fewer berries than when planted widely and in an open place, but there are practically no dry fines. A good berry, without acid, children and adults eat with pleasure.

Although reviews of the Kupchikha strawberry are quite contradictory, most people still consider it a good variety worthy of planting on their plots.

Here are other different reviews about the zemklunik

Marina Marchenko

The advantages of the variety are greatly exaggerated. The berries are sweet-tart, somewhat dry, and most importantly, you can only try the first ones; the subsequent ones are very small and dry out.

I have more than 70 varieties of garden strawberries, but I consider Kupchikha one of the best varieties. The taste is very rich and sweet. The berries are large, all approximately the same size, except for the very first ones. It bears fruit for the second year. I taste it with my husband, I just let him try it, and he gives a rating (without knowing the name). He gave the merchant's wife the highest praise. But my son liked Sensation (garden strawberries) more; it also has a very rich taste. I think the attitude towards it is different for two reasons: 1. The variety does not correspond (not Kupchikha) 2. Perhaps climatic conditions influence it.

Tatiana Karaseva

I really like Kupchikha, it’s aromatic, sweet, the taste is very rich. Yes, the first berries are very large, then they become smaller, but this does not affect the taste. The very last, small and unsightly berries make very tasty, aromatic jam, because they are a little dry, they do not boil down in the jam and do not give excess juice.

Valery Slepov

I bought a merchant’s wife twice and it grew like crazy, so whoever writes comments are sure that you have a merchant’s wife growing, they can deceive you at the nursery and send the wrong variety by mail. Perhaps that is why there are different opinions.

Evgeny Murashov

Zemklunika merchant's wife, this is a berry not for sale but for yourself, this is the bed near which little gardeners constantly graze, who walk along it like a gas mower along the fence and it doesn’t matter that the berry has another semi-green barrel and gardeners value it, of course, for its taste and aroma , for those who need a larger harvest and a larger size, and for whom the taste is not important, few people will be interested in this variety.

Dudek

Having tried Kupchikha, I realized that I had never tried a truly TASTY berry from this family before! Fragrant and incredibly tasty! We urgently need to propagate and increase the planting area.

Parusnik55 Omsk

Those who praise this disgusting thing simply haven’t tried normal strawberries. How can you praise something that doesn’t even fully ripen? How can you praise something that is very unstable to disease? Personally, I think that the merchant’s wife has no place among the KSD varieties. She doesn't even deserve to be called a landowner.

Larisa Bobkova

I bought it from a nursery two years ago and was very disappointed with this berry. There are many more disadvantages than advantages. It’s good that I only bought three bushes.

alenyshka Kopeisk, Chelyabinsk region

This is the merchant's wife growing in my garden beds

alenyshka

Flowering Kupchikha, counted about 20+ flower stalks - per bush, five berries each

ALENA Banevurovo

But the merchant’s wife and I were deceived; last year I bought 4 bushes for 200 rubles. I jumped around them for a year, picked off mustaches, flowers, covered them, this year I thought I’d eat myself and multiply them, and at the end of the day I came out with an unknown variety that doesn’t represent anything, small round berries.

Elena Kazakevich

I have only two bushes of the Merchant's Wife, the rest are all different varieties, and now I look at the huge healthy bushes of the Merchant's Wife, at her tall peduncles, fat mustaches, dense berries that do not rot in our dampness, and I have a desire to throw away EVERYTHING (!!!), even the most tasty (covered with mold) and plant the entire strawberry plantation with strawberries. The berries are delicious, we can’t raisin them because the humidity is 100%, the first large ones from the bush are for eating, and the rest, which are small, can be processed in any way. I tried jam from it, the berries do not get soft and are delicious when frozen.