Kitchen Garden Forum

I am having a problem with the strawberry plants in my imitation victorian planter.

As you can see from the attached photos the leaves have been reduced to virtually nothing. There is no evidence of a pest and last year I emptied the planter, thoroughly cleaned it and replanted the stawberrys but with the same result.




Can anyone tell me the cause and more importantly the solution. I have strawberrys on my allotment which are not affected at all.

Thank you

Jonathan

Any evidence of slug trails?

I do have some slugs in the garden but no evidence of any trails.

If it is slugs and the strawberries are in pots you can fasten copper ribbon around the pots or smear vaseline around the pots but chances are that if they are slugs they may be lurling inside the pot by now. Also if the plants touch another surface the slugs or snails can climb acrss. Another alternative is vine weevils but these don't usually bit holes in the middle of the leaves. If you repot the strawberries look out for fat white grubs in the soil as these are vine weevil larvae. There are also signs that something is rasping the leaves to start with which again points to slugs. Somebody more expert may think differently.

I would suspect Vine Weevil because some of the start points of the damage show the classic VW bite.
Probably too late to find any grubs at this time of the year the emerge a couple of months ago. This damage could well be from newly emerge weevils.
I would remove the plants from your planter, inspect the roots for damage and change the soil in the planter and replant if plants are sound.
The problem is the new batch of eggs produced by this years VW progeny.
The soil should be put into a strong plastic bags and tied up tightly and committed to the LA dump.
JB.