something funky w/ strawberries

12 years ago

don't know what's going on....i bought some plants earlier this spring, (ozark's from Bonnies plants). we planted them in a gutter (with holes drilled in the bottom for drainage) and hung it from the fence as we have limited garden space...

the soil is peat based soiless mix. we got some really nice yummy berries. over the past two weeks, they've gone downhill... first i saw the lowest leaves getting brown/red.

then i saw a strawberry that was grayish and moldy looking. i hadn't been overwatering, but this was after a bit of rain. i pulled that sucker out of there, and made sure there weren't any others like that. now the leaves are getting all funky, and the strawberries that are on the plants aren't looking real good. i didn't want to overload this post with pictures, so i'll link to the spot where the photos are.

the new growth is looking good, but i don't know if this problem is systemic or not. i'm going to go out and pull/cut off all the crappy looking stuff, but i wanted to get pics before i did that so you could see where it was on the plant.

whaaaaaa....!

Here is a link that might be useful: dody's funky strawberries...

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Comments (3)

piscesfish
12 years ago
I have no clue what is going on with the berries, but planting them in a gutter and hanging them on the fence is sheer brilliance. I might have to do something similar.

Kelly
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
12 years ago
Dody,

What's going on is typical of what can go on with strawberry plants which tend to be very disease-prone.

I haven't had any serious strawberry disease issues here, but the plants are prone to bacterial and fungal leafspots, powdery mildew, leaf scorch (a fungal infection), red stele root rot, verticillium, and various fruit rots.

When you see gray mold on a strawberry, I think that is botrytis fruit rot.

The rest of your photos don't resemble anything I've seen on my strawberry plants. I don't know of a good strawberry disease diagnosis site, but if you google 'strawberry plant disease photos' you probably can find a university website featuring diseases of strawberries with photos for diagnostic purposes. It likely will be from a state where lots of strawberries are grown as production crops since those universities would put more effort into showing photos of diseased plants than a university in a state where strawberries are mainly grown by home gardeners instead of commercial producers.

Dawn
dodemeister
Original Author
12 years ago
thanks dawn, i thought it might have been something along those lines, as that's what the berries looked like, but i couldn't find anything that resembled the leaf issue. so, i think i'll try some fungicide, and see what happens.

kelly, i can't take credit for the idea of gutter planting, i saw it on this site(linked below). we're trying just one this year to see how it works. so far, so good!

Here is a link that might be useful: gutter gardening