Strawberry plant rusty looking?

[Muzzymoo]

Hello,

Firstly I would like to say what a great forum you have here. I didn’t know anything about until until I started searching for a problem with my strawberries and here I am Pleasure to meet you all!

We have a metal raised bed in Scotland that has strawberries in them. They were not growing much at all so I pulled them up with a view of relaxing as they are two years old.

I was surprised to see what looked like orange rust at the base of the root. The plants were unusually easy to pull out the ground offering little resistance.

Just wondered if anyone knew what the orange stuff is?

I have left the raised bed empty and we can leave it empty for the season if required if it’s anything sinister.

If it’s nothing then we can put the bed back in action but wanted to check with some knowledge people if that’s ok?

Thank you for your time - Really appreciated.

Many Thanks,

Murray

[Westi]

Hi Muzzymoo & welcome to the forum!

I'm glad you took the leap of faith & posted. I know it can seem a bit insular reading posts with the same people posting, but we are mainly posting to keep the forum going with no attempt to exclude anyone. None of us are not as young as we used to be, but with age comes experience, but we keep afoot of the new things as well & you will find some of the guys on YouTube & some have actually been doing no dig for decades! Not to mention their main jobs in related environments! And we pretty much cover the country.

Now strawberries are not my forte, but hang in there as I can pretty much guarantee one of these clever guys or girls will know the answer! They are early risers though & out & about doing their growing so post responses follow the next morning. I look forward to the answer myself!

[tigerburnie]

Any idea how old they are?
It looks like they are going over and at the end of their life, plants are finished at around 5 years old and need replacing. I f you do go for new plants, don't put them in the same place, you will need a new bed for them.

[Geoff]

Strawberries suffer from all sorts of viruses, here's an article about them https://www.rhs.org.uk/disease/strawberry-viruses If the tops died off like they describe or like in this photo of some I had die it is probably a virus, though I have never seen it have that effect on the root system. Like Burnie says you must change the compost before you try strawberries again. Mine that died were a modern variety Centenary but an old variety Symphony alongside them was unaffected so you perhaps try that variety next time.

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