Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: lazza on July 13, 2012, 13:50
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Well, having had three good years of strawberries, and then planted new plants this Spring, everything seems to have gone wrong!!
It started off very promising. The new plants seemed strong and we were getting a good number of flowers. And the first few strawberries were large and tasty. But in the last 2 weeks, I have been fighting a losing battle...
At least 50% of the fruit has rotted before it has ripened. And much of the remaining fruit is getting eaten by something!
I guess the rotten fruit is due to the almost non-stop rain we have had here for the last 2 months, but I can't work out what is eating the rest. I have found some very small slugs, but I am not sure they can account for the devastation, and I have slug pellets down; and the crop is netted against birds and mice. Each fruit is being eaten in a network of lines about 2-3mm wide taking off the surface layer of the fruit.
Any ideas, to see if I can salvage a few fruit for us?
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Can the birds land on your netting and have a feast, bearing in mind their weight which will push the netting down onto the fruit?
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I don't think so. Anyway, I think the birds have all drowned...
Do woodlice eat strawberries?? I just went out to try to salvage some fruit for tea tonight, and there was a woodlouse under one...!
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remember a slug can travel up to a mile at night to find food !
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I had squirrels gnawing on my strawbs leaving marks as you describe. They also bit off some and just dropped them.
My plants are in troughs under net but they ripped/bit small holes and got access.
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Hi
We've had the same problem but I did actually find a small slug in a strawberry, inside a little tunnel that it had dug! We also have netting and are growing the strawberries on a membrane and have used slug pellets.......! Maybe we are experiencing 'super-slugs' that can withstand all the above...?
Best of luck!
Wendy
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Field mice like to nibble mine.
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I don't think so. Anyway, I think the birds have all drowned...
Do woodlice eat strawberries?? I just went out to try to salvage some fruit for tea tonight, and there was a woodlouse under one...!
Yes! Woodlice always get my strawberries :(
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The wet weather has virtually annihilated my crop. I've just been out now (as we have a rare break from the rain), but as you say, the majority are rotting before they're ripe. In addition, I've found some are infested with a horrible thread-like worm - very thin, literally like a piece of cotton ... anyone know what it might be?
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I had squirrels gnawing on my strawbs leaving marks as you describe. They also bit off some and just dropped them.
My plants are in troughs under net but they ripped/bit small holes and got access.
I think I might settle for squirrels, as we have red ones up here, and I would possible sacrifice some soggy strawbs to have one in the garden!