Best Of
Links
Categories
Archives
Search
Subscribe
We’re pretty excited about our strawberries. We planted them last year and dutifully plucked off all the blooms, dreaming of harvests to come. This year we are anxiously awaiting our first crop and things have been looking good.
But lo–while admiring my lovely, thriving, healthy plants, I noticed something that suggests maybe they are not so healthy!
See the little black ovals on the stem? Those are bugs. That part I figured out. Now–what are they and what should I do about them?
Soapy water? (Will my strawberries taste like dish detergent?)
Diatomaceous earth? (Will it be effective?)
Chemical big guns? (Will we all die early and painful deaths?)
Comments
9 Responses to “What is eating my strawberries?”
Leave a Reply
I read the title of this post in my reader and died laughing – about 30 seconds previous I had just caught my 3 yr old eating our only ripe strawberry! Without sharing! I hope you are able to save the strawberries – one of the best parts of summer!
I was just looking for your e-mail – I need to get a hold of you – but I can’t find it! Would you mind sending it to me? Thanks!
I’m not an expert, and it’s hard to see what kind of bug it is, but it looks a lot like aphids. Those you can just wash off with soapy water (your strawberries should taste just fine as long as you wash them before you eat them). Or you can get organic pest control by buying some live ladybugs and setting them loose in your strawberry patch. You can get them online or even at home depot. If you go to GardensAlive.com, they advertise a special breed that’s supposed to not fly away somehow. Anyway, I’d go for the ladybugs, just because they’re cute.
My e-mail is ChocolateandGarlic[at]gmail.com
It is on the “About” page, but I need to figure out how to make it more visible from the sidebar or something.
I don’t have any idea what kind of bug it is but I bet a soap solution would drive them away and, no, it won’t make your strawberries taste soapy unless you eat them immediately after spraying.
If you want expert advice, take a sample to the extension center [. . .] They’ll tell you what it is and tell you how to get rid of it.
I took a clipping of my strawberries to the neighborhood gardening guru on Saturday and he also said that they looked like some kind of aphid. So I have green aphids on my rose buds and black aphids on my strawberries! His suggestion was Malathion, but I think I’m just not comfortable going there. I planted the strawberries as something fun for the kids. If I have to be hyper about them plucking one off and eating it without washing it first I don’t think it is that fun. I will definitely try the soapy water tomorrow. I hope it is not too late. I hope to at least keep the plants going long enough for the kids to get to eat a few strawberries, even if the plants don’t survive to see another season.
A friend of mine got transplants from a local grower so she had strawberries the very year she planted… so clever! I don’t know if I have a local grower, but I am thinking that is the way to go. Unless you can be diligent. See, I’m all for the cheater cheater pumpkin eater kind of gardening… and yes, I’ve missed the spring planting of the inaugural square foot garden. But the summer crop is going in today. Really.
Robin–I am intrigued by your Gardensalive suggestion. We tried a ladybug release last spring on our roses and although it was a lot of fun, the next morning we could not locate a single ladybug. We were able to locate plenty of aphids (the green variety). So it seemed like expensive fun, rather than effective fun. But if we could get ladybugs who would stay around . . .
[...] What is eating my strawberries? (8) [...]